“That went much better than I expected,” Falsie said as the group walked from the temple, “I thought they’d be mad about me abandoning the place after my pa was captured. You think they felt sorry for us because of the good captain’s bitch-crying?”

“I hope so,” Gareth snarled, “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

He was wearing his mask again and Orenda couldn’t read his face.

“She knew my grandmother,” Orenda said softly, “She recognized me.”

The more people Orenda met, the more true her past seemed. It was, perhaps, not all the ramblings of a madman. She had been born on a battlefield, the night her parents died, to an earth elven deserter of the Urillian army. Her mother had defied the Emerald Knight and refused to help conquer the fire elves. Her father had defied the Emerald Knight in an attempt to create a better world for his child. Both her parents were brave. They weren’t royalty; they had never been royalty. They were a dishonorable soldier and a fallen priest. They were not recorded in history books.

Three people had seen her father die. Two had seen her mother die. Two had seen Orenda born. It was a day that, to Orenda, seemed to mean something, to represent some sort of cycle, of birth, life, and death.

Both her parents had died on her birthday.

She didn’t know how to feel about that. She had never asked to be born and would not bear the responsibility for it. But she had spent her entire life hoping that her parents were alive, and it gave her no closure to know that they were dead, because she would never meet them. She wanted to know more about Sokomaur Sambrees. She remembered that Felaern had known her, but she didn’t even know if he was still alive.

“Did any of you know my mother?” Orenda asked.

“Yes,” Everyone answered, in vastly different tones and inflections. Gareth was in a terrible mood, and spoke quietly, pregnant with meaning. Falsie seemed happy to recount memories, and Orenda suspected that Bella was just worried about Gareth.

They were walking through a district that may have, judging by the bones of the buildings, been a place where the nobility went to shop. Now many of the places were boarded up and abandoned, and it was towards one of these buildings that Falsie was leading them. There was a sign above the shop that Orenda could not read, but the picture of a ring made her think it was a jewlers.

The large windows had been broken out and anything valuable that had once been displayed there had been stolen. Falsie climbed expertly over the broken glass and into the shop, because he apparently considered this easier than dealing with the door, which had been nailed shut with boards criss-crossing across its surface. Bella did not share this sentiment, and kicked the door in with one mighty blow.

Orenda followed her inside and saw the darkened interior had once been a storefront. It still held the counter and most of the racks and display cases, but anything inside had been taken. The moneybox behind the counter was missing, but as they walked past and into another door that swung by one hinge, she noticed that there were a stack of books behind the counter. They looked like accounting measures, and as Orenda had always held a great love of books she stopped and opened one to the last page. The final entry read:

“200 suits of enchanted armor, climbing equipment, grappling hook, display jewelry, paid in full by Prince Regent of the Urillian Empire.”

The sum of gold that accompanied this looked like a made-up number, an incomprehensible amount, and it shocked Orenda to learn that Falsie came from such wealth. She had not really absorbed the fact that his family was patronized by royalty, that his parents were armorers for-

Wait, Prince Regent? Xandra was married?

That was… strange. Orenda didn’t remember a Prince Regent at all from her history lessons. She thought she remembered Felaern saying something about a prince, but for whatever reason she hadn’t really registered what that meant. Was he dead? Was Xandra a widow? There was absolutely no reason that this mysterious man should be recorded here but nowhere else.

“Orenda?” Gareth called, “Darling, where are you?”

Orenda closed the book and hurried through the door in the wall. It was so dark inside that even her eyes strained, the pitch blackness of the underground without even a sliver of light for her elven eyes to pick up, so she held out her hand and summoned a flame. The door entered into a long, stone and earth hall that branched out into several rooms and other halls in a labyrinthian, twisting bit of disorientation, and after she passed the first room, a forge with chunks of metal and not much else- it too looked as if it had been picked clean- she stopped.

“Hello?” She called, “Where did you go?”

“Follow the sound of my voice!” Gareth yelled, and she did.

“Keep speaking!” Orenda demanded.

“Rendy,” Bella said, “You’re a mage. You should be able to find us. Look for our souls.”

Orenda stopped, concentrated, and stared off into the darkness. Almost instantly she felt them, and walked briskly in that direction. So much had happened lately that she felt her plan pressing more on her than it had any right, and she thought that perhaps the hereditary madness was setting in. Or it may be that she was just stupid. She certainly had a long history of speaking before she thought. How had she not realized that the staff was important? How had she forgotten about the prince?

She caught up to Gareth and Bella standing by a doorway. Gareth held a flame as well in his flesh hand, and she spotted it before she spotted them. They came into focus as she came nearer, and she found it odd that Falsie wasn’t with them.

“Where’s Falsie?” She asked.

“This room is sealed,” Gareth said, “With blood magic. Which, frankly, shocks the shit out of me. Normally something like that dies with the person who cast it. Some would say it requires pulling from a higher power to cast a spell that lasts after death. Maybe Helga was stronger than we thought…”

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“She left it for her son,” Orenda said, “that’s sweet.”

“It’s the only place that hasn’t been looted to hell and back,” Bella said, leaning against the wall, “Which is a shame. Helga Hilleart was said to be the best armorer on Xren.” She paused, in thought and said, “I suppose now that title goes to Xaxac Brigaddon, which is… absurd. He had no idea how to work metal, but that sterilite clothing has to be considered armor, doesn’t it?”

“Little bunny Foo Foo,” Gareth sang, “Stumbling through my poor ship. Picking up my brother and giving him great head.”

Bella laughed, and Orenda realized she had forgotten Xaxac. Her mother, and apparently her father as well, had had another lover. Sokomaur had considered one as likely the father of her child as the other, since neither of them should have been able to get her pregnant. Xac’s letter said he had children. Xac was alive and well and leading the Knights of Order- he was the key to understanding what sort of person her mother was. He may even consider her family. He would certainly be more use than Gareth in fighting the Emerald Knight.

“How’s it going in there?” Bella asked, and Orenda looked into the room beyond the doorway.

The room was covered in chests, much like Tolith’s room on his ship had been, and Falsie was so deep inside a chest so large he bent at the waist to fit, with his feet dangling a little off the ground.

“It’s going!” He called back, “It’d go a lot faster if you could help me look!”

“Can you dispel the ward?” Bella asked.

“No,” he said, “But Gareth’s a better fire mage. Can you do anything, Gary?”

“Oh,” Gareth snarled, “I’m sorry, are we living in a world where I’m not still angry at you? Take your time.”

“It needed to be done, Gary,” Falsie said, “She was worried about you. And I knew it’d get us out of any trouble for good.”

“I took off my mask,” Gareth said.

“I know,” Falsie said.

“In public!” Gareth said.

“I know.” Falsie agreed.

“I… she shouldn’t have seen me like this,” Gareth argued.

“It’s bad, Gary,” Falsie said, “I won’t lie to you. I won’t tell you it doesn’t look awful. But it’s you. It’s not Ronnie. It’s you. An… you gotta-”

“Don’t tell me what I have to do!” Gareth snarled and the flame in his hand doubled in size, flaring and lighting the corridor.

“That’s real healthy, Gary,” Falsie said sarcastically. “Look. Rendy might actually be the chosen one. The kid is special. We don’t see a lot of earth elves give birth to fire elves. Maybe it means something. I want you to accept that it might mean something.”

“No earth elf could free the staff,” Gareth leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and the fire went out.

“I needed that, Gary,” Falsie said.

“Oh, I’m sure Orenda can take care of it,” he said dismissively, “Since she’s your fucking messiah and all.”

“Gareth,” Orenda snarled as she conjured a flame and held it in the doorway for Falsie to see by, “I am consistantly amazed at the things you think I would care about. I would expect,” she said, knowing full well as the words left her mouth that they were cruel to say, yet gaining some sort of vindictive satisfaction from the pure truth in them, “That you would understand that you gave up any right you may have had to judge my life choices when you abandoned me.”

Gareth’s hands dug into his arms so hard that she heard the mechanical gears as he forced them to stall with the sheer strength of it.

“Rendy, I swear,” he said, “I sent you to Huriyat AlIinsan with some very trusted friends. I couldn’t take you myself. The Emerald Knight was actively searching for me. I had to seperate us from each other as quickly as I could. I don’t know what happened. I lost track of you. I thought you were dead. I know you don’t believe me, but I swear to you I tracked you as diligently as I could.”

“Why didn’t you take me with you?” Orenda asked, “That night, when you accidentally killed Tolith’s father? I know you saw me.”

Gareth looked one way, then the other, and slid his mask up under his hat to look her in the eye.

“You were safe where you were,” he said, “Your safety was my top priority. I knew that fool Quiroris would risk his life for you. I made sure of that. I told him that if he didn’t keep you safe I would burn that school to the ground with his students inside of it, and he believed me. I have a reputation that far exceeds the evils I would actually do.”

“What?” Orenda asked, “When did you do that?”

“I met with him several times, Rendy,” Gareth said, “Not for long and always in secret, but he learned not to trust shadows. I am a pirate, you know. I have other clothes. I was ten when my life fell apart, I grew up on the streets, on the sea, a wanted man. The Urillians saw Garon and I as heirs, for some reason. They were always after us, always watching for us. I know how to hide.”

He looked away and added, “That isn’t the only time I saw you. We’ve been watching out for you. You know that there were times you… got lucky.”

“You should have taken me with you,” Orenda said.

“Perhaps,” Gareth deflated, relaxed his arms and Orenda heard the tinkling of his fingertips against the wall. “But life is full of ‘shoulda woulda coulda’. I suppose we must look to the future. I… I want our future to be one of survival, Rendy. I don’t want it to all be for nothing. There’s no reason to go after the Emerald Knight. There’s no reason to chase death.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Orenda said, “I… think that you’re right. There is no reason to go after the Emerald Knight, not at first.”

“Really?” He said, his golden eyes lit up in the darkness, “Oh thank god! You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical, Rendy, that’s exactly the sort of thing Soko used to say to fuck with people and I’m afraid that prankster dickisness might be hereditary.”

“Again,” Orenda said, “I don’t mean to go after the Emerald Knight at first. I mean to go after Xandra.”

“And we’re back to jackassery,” Gareth threw his hands to the air, “There it is. I knew it was too good to be true.”

“Gareth, listen,” Orenda argued, “I have a real claim! My family was apparently nobility. I’m the granddaughter of the high priestess. If I get the staff, I’ll have a claim by divine right. If I call her out, she can’t say anything. If I have the staff and she can’t produce the sword, I have a claim by divine right to the throne, and she doesn’t!”

“You want to be empress?” Gareth asked, “Have you gone mad?”

“That’s… a pretty big ask, Rendy,” Bella agreed. “I don’t know that you’ve thought that through.”

“I don’t want to be empress,” Orenda argued, “I just want to knock Xandra off her throne. She has no heir. It would result in a bunch of nobles stabbing themselves in the back in a race for the crown. I think they would self-destruct.”

“They would try to assassinate you,” Bella pointed out, like a mother speaking to a child.

Orenda had to concede the point.

“Yes, Rendy, can’t we just go home?” Gareth begged, “Just go home and forget this quest, the empress, the Emerald Knight?”

“No!” Orenda argued, “We’ve already come so far! I have to at least try. We’re already halfway up the goddamn mountain!”

“Yes, we can do down as easily as we can go up!” Gareth heaved in frustration, “Or, actually, easier, because that’s how gravity works.”

“Gareth, listen to me,” Orenda grabbed him by the shirt and looked directly into his eyes, “Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be someone important. I told myself that I was a princess, that I would grow up to be a queen. I told myself that I had parents who loved me, who were going to return for me. I kept myself alive on that false hope that you despise. And now? Now I am telling myself that I am the Chosen One who will bring Order to the fire continent. And I need you to understand something. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be right. I’m going after the staff with or without you.”

“You sound just like him,” Gareth said sadly.