8
1
“I want to see them burn. I want them to feel their skin melting off of their bodies as they scream and cry. I want to grind their charred bodies into dust and throw them into the sea.”
The girl in the white dress spoke to the large suit of armor standing beside her. It said nothing. They overlooked the besieged city before them. The fires marking the walls were extinguished such that the city waited in darkness.
“That’s enough. Pet, return.” the girl spoke to the air. It was silent. “I said return!” she angrily stomped her foot into the sand. “Strange. It seems he’s left this world. Someone keeping our traditions remains among the defenders. Knight, fetch them. And take care that they are unharmed. I care not for the lives of any others.”
The suit of armor nodded. It broke into a full sprint towards the city, leaving a path of giant footprints behind it.
“What a beautiful city. Returning home after so long feels like a dream. And what great news. We may still have allies that remain. Isn’t that great news? It’s great news, Sister!” the girl shouted into the darkness. Her long black hair flowed under the faint light of the moon.
2
The suit of armor gently placed the unconscious Emily upon the ground before the girl. It spoke.
“Lacking in response. Death is imminent. Healing is required.” it said. Its voice held an electric quality, as if an arc of lightning were to speak in words.
“Then heal her! What are you doing?” the girl commanded.
“Understood.” it placed its gauntlets upon her back. Light leaked through the spaces in the armor’s helmet as Emily’s wounds closed and flesh filled the gaping cuts in her neck and side. Her pale, sweaty face relaxed. Emily opened her eyes and quickly jumped up in surprise at the strangers before her. Her eyes glowed gold. She began a chant, but the shockwave of rolling white flame radiating in all directions from the girl before her cut her off midway.
“Lacking in originality, are you?” the girl asked, irritated.
“What are you talking about? The person who created that incantation is long dead-” Emily stammered.
“No, she’s not.” the girl crossed her arms. “She’s standing in front of you.”
“Isa was blonde.” Emily shot back.
“So was I. A long time ago. Time spent in that prison turned it into…” she ran her fingers through the black hair hanging from her head. “This color.”
“Prove it then. Your control of fire was supposed to be legendary.”
“You want to see something legendary? I’ll show you.” The girl closed her eyes. A spear appeared in her left hand. White flame crept along every inch of it, but the girl’s skin remained unscathed. With a great heave, she launched it far into the air above. As it grew farther away, it glowed with an otherworldly flash, and burst into a shower of comets raining down onto the city. Emily froze in awe and horror.
The girl snapped her fingers. The comets, an instant before the collision, vanished without a trace. This girl was undoubtedly Isa. She lacked the blonde hair and red eyes of the one of legend, but such feats had been only known in times long past. No modern person could replicate them.
“All right. I acknowledge that. I have more questions than could be answered in a week, so I will leave them for now.” Emily relented. She got down on a knee and bowed her head. “What have you called me for?”
“First, I want to know. What became of the one I sent behind your lines?”
Beads of sweat began to form on Emily’s downturned face. In the face of overwhelming power, she could do nothing but answer honestly. “I defeated it. Only ashes remain to drift around in the second space of the spire.”
“Where did you learn to enter the second space? I don’t recall anything of the sort in my time.”
“It was a discovery by one of my predecessors. The way to leave was unknown, so passage between worlds was limited. However, I reversed the entry with precision and I was able to exit.”
“With precision?”
“The withering of a certain flower which grows in the north is used to gain entry. If one takes a withered flower and returns it to bloom, one can also leave through those means.”
The girl smirked. “Amusing. And you killed my pet using one of my incantations?”
“The only one we know of, yes. Conventional attacks were ineffective.”
“I never should have told Sister about that one.” the girl grumbled. She gently placed her hand under Emily’s chin. “Lift your head. I feel nothing but joy to be meeting a true scholar at this time. As you’ve acknowledged me, I would like you to heed my request.”
Emily swallowed. It was certain that this girl was the one she’d seen when she was surveilling the area. This meant that she was involved with and likely commanding the invading army. She was the true incarnation of the second rift. The creatures swarming the outside of the city were but a distraction.
“Please, allow me to hear it.”
“Surrender now. Become my ally and we will depart to destroy the northern kingdom. Our nation will be reborn atop a mountain of their corpses. I wish that we repay the humiliation we suffered ten times over.”
“What would the terms of this surrender be?” Emily asked. Her heart was gripped by a creeping dread. Outright refusal was equivalent to suicide.
“Before that, I have a question for you.” Isa gazed along the rolling sand dunes surrounding the city. “Why are you the strongest of your time? I sense no particular talent or power within you.”
“I was…ambitious.” Emily searched for the right words, carefully tailoring her answer. “I spent every free moment since I was very young in study and practice. That hasn’t changed for a day in my life.”
“How commendable. You even bore an heir such that your legacy could be preserved in your own blood.” Isa picked at a bit of grime in her fingernails. “I’m sure she will also be strong when she comes of age.”
“Thank you. Was my past all you wanted to know?” Emily asked, confused.
“No. If we are to become allies, I want you to understand my point of view. No leader ever survived by their strength alone. This is what I intended to ask. In your precious city, who is the strongest?”
“Discounting myself, it would likely be one of the associates I asked to come to assist in the defense. She hails from the north-east. A warrior who has been swinging a sword since she was large enough to hold one.”
Isa thought for a moment. “So, similar to you, she has dedicated herself in pursuit of strength?”
“Without a doubt.”
“How many of the soldiers in your city dedicated their lives to something?”
“Only a couple. Most of them have families; service is only a small part of their lives-”
“I have no need for such things. Don’t you understand, Emily? We were born human, and we have a duty. Gifted with such marvelous gifts, yet so few put even their first foot forward to grasp their own. They lay on their backs and waste away their days. They die having accomplished nothing. We have no need for them. They are weak.” Isa pointed to the sky ahead of her. “In the north, an empire ruled by men who never sought strength or intellect. They are leeches. They only steal from people like us. I know what became of the Academy after my defeat. It became a tool. A tool for them.” She spat. “You feel the same way.”
Emily quietly tried to think of a response. Her heart and mind felt torn in different directions. The subjugation of her predecessors was undoubtedly humiliating. The thought of being one of the emperor’s servants for the remainder of her life filled her with loathing. The current emperor was hardly fit to rule. His father had been slightly better, but not by much. He was poisoned by that old man, after all. She would be better able to handle the duties of the crown than either of them.
“I’m waiting on your answer, Emily.” Isa impatiently stated.
“What will become of the soldiers if I surrender here?” Emily asked.
“The ones of remarkable strength, decided by you, will be spared. The others will be fed to my army.”
“And if I believe them all to be of remarkable strength?”
“I would advise against that. Take care not to squander my acknowledgement. Now, your answer. Will you accept my offer?”
A mirage flickered before the girl. One moment later Akari appeared before her, blade poised to cut the girl down as she stood. The suit of armor appeared between them just as quickly, blocking her blade with an outstretched palm. The clash of metal against metal left a scratch on the knight’s hand.
“Akari!” Emily yelled.
“Sheathe your sword, woman.” Isa commanded.
“Emily, are you all right? And who is this…girl?” Akari looked up and down at Isa suspiciously.
“The enemy commander.”
Akari sheathed her sword. Her eyes narrowed and she fought to hold back laughter, but it was too much for her. She pointed at Isa’s tiny body and laughed loudly, tears in her eyes.
“Emily, you called me all the way over here to defend against…a girl who couldn’t reach the top cupboard on her own? Is this a joke?”
“Akari, please.”
“Woman, you will show respect. I will not overlook this incident.” Isa crossly said. She avoided eye contact out of embarrassment.
“I get it. What are you here for? Asking us to rescue your pet cat?” Akari words had lost any semblance of care. Isa was hardly half her height.
“It is fortuitous that you have joined us now. Surrender now and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.” Isa stated her demand confidently.
“Is it some kind of western custom for the losing side to demand a surrender?” Akari asked. She kept one hand on the handle of her sword.
The suit of armor standing next to the girl held no life. It was animated and yet disconnected from the girl in front of her. Defeating it would be troublesome. Its empty gaze and purple-grey glint oozed hostile intent. It was nothing compared to the girl, who burned hotter than a forge in Akari’s eyes.
“No matter.” With a flick of her wrist, the point of Akari’s sword found itself staring down Isa’s face. “We refuse. You’d sooner grind our bones into dust before the city falls to the likes of you.”
3
Maria sat across from Anastasia at a table in the cafe. It was located on the eleventh floor of the Archive. Felines dressed in black and white uniforms served the customers. At the front of the cafe was a stage with four felines playing live music. It was fast paced and the perfect tuning of each note held an almost artificial quality.
“I did not expect such a place to exist.” Anastasia said over the sound of the music.
“There are far more customers here than in the main library. It could be a matter of profit. We didn’t pay to browse the books, after all.” Maria supposed.
“I would like to understand what those girls are saying.” Anastasia remarked at the performers. They were all female, and one sang into a metallic device in her hand that amplified her voice around the room. For that matter, all of them handed curious metallic devices that neither of them had seen before.
“It’s about a person lamenting over their lost lover while looking over some snow.”
“How did you know that?” Anastasia asked.
“Language classes.” Maria answered smugly. “I do not believe it an original Feline song to begin with; I have heard this tune elsewhere. The instruments and technology they have here gives it novelty. Besides, they live in grasslands with no snow.”
“Welcome to our humble establishment. How can I help you today?” a server appeared beside them. He eyed the paper menus in their hands.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“An order of honeydew milk and blueberry pancakes, please.” Maria said.
“And for you, miss?” the male server looked at Anastasia. The sharp ears at the top of his head were white and his eyes were blue and yellow. Anastasia glanced at him nervously, unsure which eye to focus on.
“I’ll have the same, but strawberry pancakes instead.”
The server gave a bow and disappeared past a wooden doorway.
“That girl looks familiar.” Maria motioned to a feline sitting alone a few tables behind Anastasia. She looked out a small window drearily sipping a cup of water.
Anastasia turned around. The girl’s brown ears and silver-white hair were peculiar, even among the feline staff. “That’s the receptionist. It is evening. Her work is finished and she is taking a break, perhaps.”
“Alone at a table for four. Perhaps you should introduce yourself to her. This could be our only time to converse with a real feline.” Maria suggested.
“There’s no way I could do that. If such a thing is on your mind, why don’t you?” Anastasia shot back.
“Sit and watch.”
4
Maria pulled out the chair and sat across from the girl. She gave no reaction besides a slight grimace. Up close, the girl’s silver-blue eyes were glimmering jewels reflecting the sights from outside the floor. The brown cat ears at the top of her head drooped as she continued to stare into the distance.
“I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling. Leave me alone.” she waved her hand to shoo Maria away.
“If you didn’t want someone to sit with you, you should have stayed at the bar.”
“Do I look old enough to sit at the bar?” the girl bared her teeth to reveal a pair of sharp, pointed canines.
“Then it can’t be helped. You were looking lonely, staring out of the window like that.” Maria noted.
“What are you here for? I’m sure you haven’t come just to talk.”
“That is, however, my reason.”
“Fine.” the girl grumbled. “If you’re here already, how about a game? We have a few sets in the back.”
“Suit yourself. If it’s a game I don’t already know how to play, you will need to teach me.” Maria cooly looked the girl in the eye. She got up and disappeared through the same door the waiter had a few minutes earlier. By the time Maria considered the girl may have simply fled, she reappeared with a wooden game set. From a distance, Maria could discern it was a set of Princesses and Dragons.
“Do you know how to play?” the girl asked after placing the set on the table.
“It would be hard to find someone our age who didn’t.”
“Perfect. Let’s make a bet. If I win, you’ll go back to your table and don’t speak to me again.” the girl said coldly.
“And if I win?” Maria asked.
“I’ll tell you my name…and we can be friends for the time you’re staying here.”
The two began their game. Maria began with an aggressive opening in an attempt to trap the girl’s Princess early. It was a common strategy to take advantage of a board state with only princesses on the board. However, the girl took care to evade any binds and they entered a middlegame of cards covering the board.
The objective of Princesses and Dragons was simple. If one could have one of their dragons on the row or column of the Princess in every cardinal direction, then the Princess would be captured and the player with the dragons would achieve victory. Each turn, a player had the chance to make three moves, which consisted of either placing a card on the board or moving an existing card of their own. Only one dragon could be placed per turn.
Maria was a highly theoretical player. She had seen and recalled thousands of positions from past games. This knowledge solidified her strategy and made her difficult to catch off guard. To her, every game state was an isolated existence waiting for the optimal sequence of moves. Achieving a winning board state was only a matter of execution in the present. Her face remained frozen during play, without so much as a twitch of the eyebrow.
The girl was the opposite. She continued to play wildly, relying on far-fetched tactical motifs to avoid defeat at every turn. For a player like Maria, the continuous onslaught of strange configurations could be considered difficult. It was as if the girl took pleasure from creating a new discovery every move. Such a style would normally be seen as absurd, yet she held her ground. After every time Maria dropped a new card on the board, her face glowed and she made strange, cat-like noises in excitement.
Forty moves and an hour later, the two reached a deadlock. With Maria’s last move, the game reached a position where neither player could make any move without risking defeat. The board was nearly full of cards. While Maria’s Princess had two dragons staring down at her, any offensive move she could make would result in three, giving the girl the win. The girl found herself in a similar position with her princess locked in a two-by-two island of squares on the far corner of the board.
“It’s a draw then.” Maria declared.
“Not yet.” Without a moment of hesitation, the girl took one of her dragons off of the gameboard to continue. “Make your move.”
Maria pounced on the opportunity and a short while later, the girl threw down her remaining cards in defeat.
“Good game.” Maria said. She held out her hand to shake the girl’s hand, as was customary for a match between strangers. The girl reluctantly agreed.
“It’s time to hold up your end of the bargain.” Maria said.
“I’m Delanor. One of the keepers of the Archive, and nothing else.” the feline named Delanor leaned back in her chair. “I used to sit at these tables alone in hopes someone would approach. So much time went by that I forgot that was why. I suppose your presence is welcome. Your name?”
“Maria. I hail from the north.” Maria answered.
“I can tell. I don’t see any southerners with yellow eyes like yours. They are close to gold.” Delanor sighed. “The view outside of the windows is good from the eleventh floor. Too high and the cloud cover gets in the way. Too low and you can’t see the horizon.”
“Even the view from up high can’t see more than a few miles.”
“I know. I’d like to expand my view one day. Working here in the Archive can be dull. And before you ask, I do not work on this floor. I would like to avoid the service of customers and my singing voice is not like those girls.” Delanor said with a shrug of disgust.
“You’d like to expand your view? What do you mean by that?”
“One of the upper floors is a terrace where messenger swallows bring in records from lands stretching farther than one could travel in a year. I hear of many things. The rebellion and now the invasion from the south. Yet they’re nothing more than words on a page. It’s a dull existence. Even the most exciting of reports isn’t worth a mention in comparison to the real thing.”
“I don’t think you want to see the real thing. Most people vomit the first time they smell a corpse. And there’s nothing stopping a stray arrow from sticking itself in your eye if you’re there. Even if it isn’t you, it will be someone you know, and you will remember those things.” Maria replied. It irritated her slightly that someone would voluntarily enter a war zone. The academy would gladly recruit a foolish girl like her.
“I’ll never know unless I leave this tower.”
Maria was struck with an idea. “Come with us then. We’re heading south, right into the face of the southern invasion. I’ll put a word in with our captain to see if she can bring you on. Do you have any skills to be of aid?”
Delanor’s ears perked up in excitement. Her face looked the same as it had during the game. “I can forage for game. In addition, I have expertise in relics and history, since those are the floors I manage.”
“Great. I know this is early, but welcome aboard Delanor.” Maria gave a slight grin. This girl would eat her words. The thought of it was sickly pleasurable.
6
“It’s dark. I can’t see a thing.” Anastasia felt her way through a stone tunnel. Delanor reached into her pack and lit a torch, lighting the way ahead.
The captain had accepted Maria’s suggestion after a bit of haggling. Someone with her knowledge was useful and a scribe of her pedigree could be useful if they came in contact with the unknown. Once Delanor hastened the resupply for the party, the captain was thoroughly convinced of her utility.
After departing for the desert, the party came across a tomb. It jutted from the ground with a statue of a woman engulfed in fire. At Delanor’s suggestion that entrance might present some benefit to the party, they entered.
“I believe I know of this crypt. It was built as a defensive measure to keep out invaders, but it fails to hold an army on its own.” Delanor informed them.
“Is that not a reason to keep out of it?” Maria’s lack of amusement was clear.
“The crypt exit will take us straight to the exterior of St. Keres. It should save us a few days of travel time. Worry not about the wagon, it should appear beside us when we surface. Such is the nature of this place.”
Her explanation was cut short by an explosive boom far down the hall. A wide column of stone rushed down the passageway at blinding speed. Maria erected a thick wall of icy vines to halt its advance, but the heavy stone was barely slowed as it barreled towards the group.
Anastasia tackled Maria and dove to a thin opening to the side. The captain grabbed Delanor by the neck and did the same. Canary, struck by the misfortune that was his spindly frame, was swept away with a crunch. A pained groan from his pulverized remains indicated he had survived. The stone column slowly retreated from where it came, bringing Canary with it.
“You could have told us there would be traps.” Canary muttered as his body reassembled itself.
“Sorry. I forgot.” Delanor replied. “We could die of thirst if we wait too long, but fortunately most of the structure is known. We are not the first ones to find ourselves down here. I will be your guide.” she motioned for the group to follow her. Carefully avoiding the slight depression in the ground, the group advanced to a wide room with a stone gate at one end. Above it, another statue, the same as the one at the entrance, stood watch.
“What-” the statue began to speak in a voice which sounded like blocks of stone rubbing against each other.
“A fishing net.” Delanor cut it off before it could finish. The gate below the statue opened, revealing another tunnel leading both to the right and left.
“Clever. You know this whole place like it’s your house?” The captain asked, slightly amused.
“Only some of it. There’s a certain number of questions that come in a rotation. The first few are always the same. It will get harder as we progress.” Delanor answered.
“I’d never have taken the cat people to be the ones to write everything down.” Canary chided.
“We aren’t cat people, we’re felines. And we manage the biggest store of known information on the continent. What else would you expect?”
“Anyways, moving on.” Maria interjected. She held Anastasia’s hand tightly and pulled her along. “My ice feels weaker here. Is that an effect of the crypt?”
“The person who built this thing used all kinds of tricks to make it hard to get out of. Something that weakens you should not come as a surprise. We turn left. Don’t say anything when we enter the tunnel. There’s a sound sensor that shoots metal arrows that will kill anything but that abyssal behind me.” she pointed to Canary. “I would recommend he stand in front to shield us from any possible projectiles.”
“Not a chance. I still feel pain, you know.” Canary grumbled and walked to the back of the group in protest.
“Suit yourself.”
7
“Stalling for time, are you?” Isa ran her hand through a thin water-like film separating her from the world outside. Sunlight poked out from the horizon. As the four stood in a bubble of slowed time, the battle outside continued. The sun rose twice as quickly and the soldiers manning the wall patrolled their stations with extra vigor. It was those within the bubble for whom time inched forward with hardly a minute passing.
Akari and Emily looked at each other, and back at Isa and her suit of living armor.
“Knight, take care of those two. I have business to tend to in the north. It appears some vermin have appeared on the edges of our ranks. Be sure to break their wills, but spare their lives. I will have you two as my own, even if you are…less than cooperative.”