The first five minutes of whatever dream or illusion I’d found myself in was spent trying to figure out the exact nature of my situation, from which I learned precious little.
Scrambling from the luxurious bed, I ran in my borrowed body to the balcony. Gods, these silken pajamas are ridiculous. Who would I have to murder to get my hands on fabric this soft? My bare feet crossed the soft carpet and then the polished marble of the balcony. The igneous stone made up the walls, ceiling, and pillars of the room but artisans had made sure to put proper floors in so that no one would trip over the uneven ground.
The morning sun and the fresh air welcomed me onto the balcony. Below me, past the edges of the plateau the central palace had been built on, I could see the entire western side of the capital. It was one thing to see it in Drache’s projections. Those were silent with a kind of ethereal quality that was jarring enough to remind me that I was looking at something that wasn’t real.
But here on the balcony, I felt the warmth of the morning sun and the wind from the great height. The sounds of people stirring and going about their early day business wafted up to me. My senses could perceive these happenings as real, tangible, not phantoms. The cool marble under my feet was firm, the beating of Drache’s heart in her chest was steady.
If this is an illusion, it’s the best damn illusion I’ve ever been subjected to. It’s like emotional transference but taken to a whole new level. Her memories aren’t just sharp, it’s also the sheer weight of the emotion she’s attached to them that makes them feel real enough that I see them like I was in her own body.
At the moment, within the memory, there was palpable excitement but an undercurrent of worry, mixed with a tinge of fear of the unknown. Something big is happening today. Something potentially life-changing for the people of Ishrati. But as with everything that has the power to change the lives of thousands of people, Drache wasn’t sure if that change was going to be good or bad.
Suddenly, I felt my consciousness shunted out of Drache’s body, and I found myself floating next to her on the balcony. Floating was an accurate word because when I looked around to get my bearings I couldn’t see my feet. Everything below my waist was a wispy vapor and my skin was transparent, making me look like a typical depiction of a ghost. Then to my shock, Drache turned her head to look directly at me.
“Don’t take it so personally. I just don’t like the idea of you inhabiting my body. You are a young boy, after all.” Her smug attitude had returned, and with her bedhead, silk pajamas, and toothy grin she looked eerily familiar. I can see how this woman is distantly related to Alicia. Almost every detail is the same. My eyes wandered down below her chin, where a loose button at the top of her pajamas revealed some skin. Okay, almost every detail.
Seeing my line of sight waiver, Drache’s grin grew wider and she feigned coquettish embarrassment. “See what I mean? Already your thoughts are preoccupied with such vulgar inclinations.” I growled at her, and my voice sounded almost like an echo in an empty cave.
“You did that on purpose so I would look.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps. But you didn’t have to take the bait, boy. And you did. So you’re still in the wrong.”
Good thing Deotra isn’t here. Don’t think she would’ve appreciated that little stunt. “So your thoughts and emotions are all over the place. Care to let me in on what’s going on?” She looked out past the horizon, where the sun was rising up into the clear blue sky. A pair of dragon riders in gleaming golden armor swooped past on their dragons. They looked nothing like the riders of modern Ishmar; their armor was decadent, but also designed to invoke the image of protectors. There were no harsh angles or brutish practicality in the riders’ armor. Instead, they were like works of art, statues come to life.
“Today is, or rather, should have been, an auspicious day not just for Ishrati, but all of Selarune.” Secured into their harness with thick golden cords, the riders did a graceful turn and saluted to Drache as they passed. She waved back to them, and I saw her smile for the first time. I’d pinch myself if I wasn’t aware of what was going on. That was definitely one thing I wasn’t expecting to see today.
The dragons themselves looked fierce, as trained beasts of war would, but they looked healthier and more regal, too. Almost like they themselves understood they were guards, not plunderers and raiders like the Ishmarians. The dragons had several pieces of golden armor plate strapped to their thighs and shoulders, secured with thick leather belts. The two riders flew past the side of the palace and disappeared from view, and she let out a heavy sigh.
Below us, civil servants and volunteers were overseeing the final preparations for a glorious ceremony. Decorations had been hung from oil lamps flanking the streets, which had been swept clean. I could see people already finding places on the sidewalks all the way to the outer districts, where the main road wound through the city to where I could no longer see it.
“The other members of the Five Kings are coming here to celebrate a grand occasion. Our nations are about to mark this year as the apex of our civilizations, to commemorate our achievement for all time.” She leaned on the guardrail, palming her cheek as she drew in a breath through clenched teeth. “It was on this day that my mother did something unforgivable. It changed the course of history forever, and led to the fall of Ishrati and the ruin of our entire solar system.”
She turned to me as we watched the citizens wrap up their daily doings to avoid getting caught flat-footed by the visiting royals. “How much do you know about the War of the Five Kings?” I shrugged, which I felt more than I saw given how see-through my body was.
“Not a whole lot. The scriptures say that the Imbalancer of Scales destroyed the other worlds in our reality, one by one. His armies of demons descended on every world and darkened their skies, yadda yadda yadda, poetic romantic depictions of wholesale slaughter, you get the idea.”
Drache was quiet a moment. “The Imbalancer struck Selarune first. He didn’t even have to do much. He turned the Five Kings into his monstrous servants and they did most of it for him. The goddess and her angels were so busy defending the other worlds that we were left to fend for ourselves at first.”
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. No need to skip ahead when I can show it to you one step at a time.” She waved her hand in a wide arc, and her pajamas morphed into the more familiar red and gold gown I’d seen her in earlier. “When the Kings arrived, they ascended to Divernia to discuss matters of state. We must be going.”
She lifted off the ground, almost as if gravity no longer existed. Some invisible force grabbed hold of me, gently but unexpectedly, and propelled me up beside her. As we flew up and over the palace, my stomach churned. Oh gods. This may not be real but my guts don’t know that. I wonder what will happen if I get so sick I puke?
My intrusive thoughts aside, I didn’t need to panic for too long. Drache brought us up swiftly, taking care not to jostle me. I saw the sun streak across the sky to mark the passage of time, ending sometime just after noon. Drache has total control over everything I’m seeing. Grain of salt here, Kuro. You’re gonna see what she wants you to see, but that won’t stop me from reading in between the lines.
We alighted upon a flat platform level with the base of the temple’s first floor. While the stone that held up Divernia was rough hewn, the top had been sheared to create space for the structure, among other things. A lavish garden with finely attended hedges and marble statues flanked a perfectly polished road of gleaming stone, stretching for about two hundred feet to the entrance of the temple itself.
The platform was painted with a large, intricate teleportation rune. Composed of four rings positioned along the cardinal points of a fifth larger ring, the rune hummed with magic. The central ring was a solid red, with flecks of magical fire twisting around its edges. The western ring was green and emanated a low whisper like a soft wind. To the east was a brown ring interlaced with sparkling stones. The northern ring was white and had icicles growing out of it. Finally, the southern ring was blue and crackled with similarly colored electricity.
Even as I looked at the central ring, the strange runes written within it twisted into words I could understand. They read, “the quest for greater power is rooted in the search for truth, for both are synonymous with one another”. Each of the four smaller rings also had pearls of wisdom written inside of them.
The green ring bore the inscription, “pride in one’s achievements should never become complacency”. The blue ring’s rune became the words, “the ability to rule is not a right, but a privilege, and never an entitlement”. In the brown ring were the words, “look but never step backward, and you will always find the way forward”. Lastly, the words in the white ring said, “revenge requires strength of body and will, but forgiveness requires strength of the heart”.
Yeesh. That’s some real self-righteous crap there. Considering what the scriptures say went down at this temple it seems hypocritical to put this thing here. Then again, history is always written by the victors so if the intent was to vilify the Five Kings, then it would make sense to bury anything that painted them in a sympathetic light.
Drache must have noticed me ogling the teleportation circle, because she clucked her tongue at me. “Each of the precursor kingdoms contributed to the construction of Divernia, and the words inscribed here are meant to reflect the sentiments of the Kings who agreed to be here for the final unveiling.” She stood apart from the circle, almost as if she were wary of stepping into it.
Noticing her hesitation, I asked a question on impulse. “What was the purpose of Divernia?”
Drache’s expression darkened, not in anger but in reflection. “Of all the things that aren’t clear in the excessively flowery language of the scriptures, it’s what the original intention was. Was it a monument? A testament? Or a means to bring about the end of the world?”
She was about to answer when the rings lit up. The runes gave off a burst of blinding colored light before a series of flashes illuminated the arrival of five humanoid shapes, each standing in the center of the rings. The shapes, at first amorphous and featureless, turned into their various true forms, like liquid suspended in air being shaped by an invisible hand.
Within the earth circle stood an average height, heavyset human man in a fancy burgundy dress shirt that was cinched under his protruding belly by a strained yellow cord. He wore similarly colored trousers with gold filigree and leaned heavily on a cane. His skin was ruddy and flushed, like he’d exerted himself from climbing too many stairs, a pair of beady blue eyes hidden beneath thick brown eyebrows streaked with white. A monocle clung to the side of his beaked nose and above an immaculately trimmed mustache. Well, he certainly looks like what I’d imagine a king would. Some old man getting fat off his subjects’ hard work.
In the ice circle was a painfully skinny and pale human girl who looked barely out of her teens, her hazel eyes peeking out from under a shock of short frost-blue hair. Her crown seemed too big and was more of a headband than an actual crown, given the way it was diagonally fastened around her forehead. Her dress was white with only bits of green, barely showing any of her skin other than her hands. Even her neck was covered by a high collar fixed with a cravat, and she had no jewelry or even any metal at all on her besides the crown. She fidgeted in place, her right hand tugging at her left sleeve nervously. She reminds me of Deotra. Definitely doesn’t look like she wants to be up here, although given the way she looks ready to engage fight or flight I’d chalk it up to antisocial tendencies rather than fear of heights.
The wind circle unveiled a tall, slender man with flowing flaxen hair and the unmistakable bearing of a pureblooded elf, if the pointed ears weren’t enough of a giveaway. He had a heavy, multi-layered silken coat of many colors, all of which could be attributed to the season of autumn. His hair made it all the way down to his waist and despite the heady wind at this height, he was able to keep it from flying all over the place. Across his face and covering his eyes was an embroidered blindfold of green cloth, covered in arcane runes written in elven. Blind, but how? Self-inflicted or some other reason? I wasn’t expecting a blind king.
The lightning circle’s occupant was the tallest yet; a seven foot beast of a man with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, with a truly magnificent bushy reddish yellow beard that ran down the upper half of his torso. A lion’s ears poked from the mane on his head, the only thing about him soft and rounded. His eyes were fierce and had an amber glow to them, and he was adorned in a blue and purple robe that seemed like it would be comfortable to move around in rather than turn heads with its pageantry. I kind of like this one. He seems like the complete opposite of what a king would be, and that wins him some points. Plus he looks like he would rather solve a matter of state with an arm wrestling match instead of some stuffy diplomatic meeting. An oddly refreshing thought.
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Not surprisingly, Drache’s mothe,r Evros, came out of the fire ring, dressed in an ostentatiously gaudy golden dress with red embroidery invoking the image of flames along its hem and sleeves. Ugh, Evros on the other hand looks the part to a T. I wonder how much of her rubbed off on her daughter. Beside me, Drache’s face twisted into a snarl of contempt. Maybe not as much as I think? Let’s hope not.
“They’ll address me as if I am here, because this is my memory,” her voice said as it sounded in my mind. “I can still converse with you. No one in this memory can deviate from their course, given this has already happened. So even if I don’t respond because I’m talking to you, they’ll carry on as if I had answered.”
Ah, that makes sense. Well that’s helpful. She can keep me apprised of the situation while we go through it without having to pause for them. Without skipping a beat, Drache stood off to the side of the rings, waiting for the Five Kings to get their bearings. I floated beside her, ready to make my observations.
“Tell me about them.” I asked. “You might be the only person in all of existence who knows anything about the Five Kings anymore.” She blinked, her expression shocked. “You called me a person. Not a demon.” Huh. I guess I did. Didn’t even think about it.
“Well, you’re sharing a lot of stuff with me. A demon probably wouldn’t do that, even if the ultimate goal was to just trick me into trusting them. So I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.”
Again, she gave me a small smile, but it looked genuine, or the very least not sinister. “Hm. I hardly gave you reason to trust me. So I suppose you were right to be cautious. Deotra did make a point of telling me off a bit about the need to give you a reason to trust me, so perhaps she was right all along.”
It was my turn to blink. “This was Deotra’s idea?” She shook her head.
“Not quite. This was my idea, but her suggestion that I do something to earn your trust. I have few ways to do so other than outright manipulation of your memories, and even those have their limits. So I thought this might be the only way.”
Something writhed in my heart a bit, and a dark thought crossed my mind. “You hate them, don’t you?” The smile vanished instantly. “You must really hate them to show a complete stranger all of this. Is it about revenge? I may not know much about a lot, but I know vengeance and how it eats people alive. I know firsthand what people will do to get it.”
She paused, contemplating me. Then she made her way to her mother’s side. “Not all of them. The other Kings were good souls who got caught in what my mother unleashed. If anyone deserves my wrath, it is her.” She stopped before the form of her mother, who had now fully materialized within the ring. “She ruined everything.” There was such hate in her voice that it made me shudder, that familiar cold feeling creeping along my spine.
“We’re wasting time. There is one thing I have to show you before your friends wake.” As she waved her hand, time propelled itself forward again, the Five Kings walking together across the vast garden to the temple entrance.
“Wait,” I asked. “When I took your hand, it was still only a little past two in the morning. Are you saying that I’ve lost a few hours?”
She nodded. “You’re essentially dreaming. It’s easier to overlap my memories onto your sleeping mind for you to view because so much of your body is in an inactive state. Your mind can devote more of its energy to interpreting the memory as it was when I experienced it. Deotra can communicate this way with you as well, although her abilities exceed even my own. As a being of pure magic, she can make up for any deficiencies far more readily than I can. Her bond with you also allows her to use emotional transference as a kind of cipher code to better translate what she wishes to share.”
Woah. I really did miss out on the benefits of having a familiar. Then again, I doubt it would matter if I didn’t have one like Deotra. It felt like there was a piece of myself missing without her in the memory. I’d expected her to be with me. I’ll share everything I learned here with her later if she doesn’t already know. Maybe it’ll be a good way to get her take on things.
Plus I just owe the poor girl some time alone like I promised. I don’t really want to make our first private outing too much like an interrogation. The pang in my heart took me by surprise at first.
“Try to focus here, boy. You can worry about where you’re going to ask your familiar later.”
Yikes. So this is still a two way street. Drache is connected to me but that means I’m also connected to her. So while I’m seeing this, she’s learning about me too. “That’s right, boy.” She said, causing me to figuratively jump out of my non-existent skin. “Oh don’t worry. I don’t intend to learn anything too invasive about you. I just want to get a better sense of who you are.”
“So that was your game. You offer me this glimpse into your past and while I’m looking out the window you look into it. Well played.”
She scoffed, just as we reached the front of the temple as a group. “You helped me remember that it isn’t right to just demand without offering something in return. You can’t take without giving. That makes you a tyrant. That would make me like my mother.” She bit down hard on that last word, her teeth grinding as she spat it out like something bitter.
It was very unusual to see the Kings moving together without hearing words, oblivious to everything around them, eagerly discussing something while Evros looked ahead without glancing back. They passed under the massive arch of the temple exterior and through its massive double door, made of metal so clean and polished I could see their reflections in it. The procession moved across the carpeted interior with unnatural speed to the round table at its heart.
The room inside the temple was one massive space that encompassed the entire structure. The glass rotunda above the center of the room was so huge that it had to make up at least half of the actual ceiling. Along the edges of the room were homages to the various lands the Kings hailed from, each contained within a section color coordinated to the King’s teleportation circle and their chair at the round table.
Said table was the only modest decoration in the room. It had no drape or covering, only a depiction of a map of Selarune within the center, not carved but a painted wooden plank inserted into the middle. The chairs at the table were far more elaborate, with padded cushioning and golden emblems depicting the corresponding elements attributed to each King mounted upon their tops.
Each King took their seat at the table, with Drache standing just behind her mother’s chair. Evros leaned back in her seat, glancing at each of her guests. “It’s taken a long time to reach this point,” she said in a steady voice. She doesn’t sound like Drache. Her voice doesn’t have the same impulsive or abrasive quality to it. She sounds like someone who understands the value of a calm appearance.
As I hovered quietly next to Drache, she pointed to each of the Kings. “The older human is Burundus, the King of Earth. The tall elf is Vigiro, the King of Wind. Gallardos, the lion beastman, is the King of Lightning, and the young human girl is Festahl, King of Ice. We met on this day to determine what was going to be the future of all our nations. At least, that’s what I had been led to believe.”
The discussion got heated. Through the accelerated passage of time, I saw the Kings get more and more animated, each growing more frustrated while Evros sat in her chair, passive and unmoving. Eventually all four of the other Kings were railing against her, some waving fists, some slamming the table, some shouting. Only Festahl remained seated and calm, although she was glaring daggers at Evros.
Finally, Evros stood, smiled, and placed her hand on the table. Time slowed back to its normal pace. “I can see we will find no common ground on this issue. I had thought you would all possess enough wisdom to see my point of view, but alas you disappoint me.”
Burundus adjusted his monocle before speaking in a nasally voice. “You are talking about murder, Evros. Murder of your own citizens! Murder of our citizens! Based on a what if? A complete hypothetical? You’re mad.”
Vigiro spoke next, and even though his voice was calm I could detect an undercurrent of rage beneath it. “You have not the authority to strike down your own people, let alone those in our countries. What you are proposing could be construed as a declaration of war. It will not stand. If you make a move against us, we shall respond with force to protect our own.”
The gigantic lion beastman Gallardos beat his chest with his right fist, a clear sign of his solidarity with the others. “I agree. Nobody wants a war, Evros. There’s never been a reason for us to go to war. And you want this? Sounds a lot like you might be getting too big for your britches.”
Evros turned to Festahl. “See reason, Festahl. Your own people killed your parents. Their bodies hadn’t even gone cold before you were placed on your father’s throne. Why should you be beholden to those who murdered your family?” The older woman’s eyes were no longer sage but now savage, with a horrible and terribly familiar gleam to them. Well if I needed any more proof, there’s the familial resemblance. Drache may not want to admit it but I see where she gets her crazy eyes from.
The mousy young woman spoke, her voice as cold and empty of sympathy as a glacier. “My parents wanted to do what you told them. What you told all of us. And a concerned individual might have warned her people what her parents were planning. I loved my parents, but if they were going to aid you in what amounts to an inquisition?”
She crossed her arms. “Then they’re no parents of mine. I didn’t want my throne. I don’t believe I’m ready for it yet. But if it means opposing what you want, Evros, then it’s a sacrifice I’ll make.”
There was virtually no warning when a spark shot out from Evros’ hand, traveling across the table to each seat. In the space of a second each of the Kings were immobilized as their chairs discharged a blast of magical energy, wrapping them in excruciating chains of fire that materialized out of thin air and pinned them in place. “I was hoping it wouldn’t play out like this, but even a king can lack vision.”
Lines of magical energy emerged from the bound Kings, coming together above the center of the table. Evros extended her hand to cradle the coalescing energy in the palm of her hand. Another line shot straight up, through the rotunda’s ceiling, into the sky where it turned clear blue into smoky black. Some tore in the air, and in horror I realized what she was doing.
“She’s ripping a hole in the boundary between worlds.” I frantically turned back to Drache. “Is this how it happened? Is thi-” She waved her hand to cut me off.
“Watch. Listen. It is not over.”
The glass shattered, but the individual shards didn’t fall. Instead they rose upward, into the sky where the rift was growing. Loose stone, the objects in the room, eventually even the walls themselves crumbled and were yanked up into a growing tear in the fabric of reality. There was a sound that could not be described in words I knew emanating from the tear, that was growing louder with every passing second.
“I have a part to play in this, even if it means nothing. It reminds me that I failed and that I too am to blame.” Drache pointed her right hand at Evros’ back and a brilliant lance of golden fire streaked forward, piercing the older woman between her shoulder blades. She let out a choked gurgle, her head turning with great difficulty to regard her daughter. Her eyes were blazing with hate, the same hate I’d seen in her daughter’s eyes before.
“I expected this from your kind. But not from you, my dear. How… ungrateful.” She moved her left hand back and opened her fingers, a light growing in her palm. I didn’t have time to question whether I’d be affected by what was about to happen when the light exploded, and my skin felt like it was on fire. I tumbled back through the air, cartwheeling with no way to stop myself, instinctively smacking my arms against my body to put out nonexistent fire that I was sure was there.
Both Drache and I landed on the floor some ways away, which was now fracturing and being sucked upwards towards the growing rift. The Kings were all still trapped in their chairs, screaming, struggling, trying desperately to break free. Beneath us, cracks formed in what remained of the ground, light shining through. As chunks of marble and stone lifted up behind me, I could see a swirling void beneath us, with a bright light at its center.
At the bottom of a vortex of chaos was the camp where I sat in a complete stupor, oblivious to my surroundings, Deotra still clinging to my arm. Something pulled me towards it, a deep instinct yelling at me that this was the only way out. I turned my head to the side, where Drache lay, her hair whipping around in a frenzy. She was holding on to the floor for dear life, but even still she reached out her hand to me. Without thinking, I reached out for her and grabbed hold.
Above us, the rift opened fully, a window into the empty hell of a distant universe, and like viscous tar an oozing black substance leaked out, gleaming with a million stars that twinkled like eyes. My skin crawled just looking at it.
The alien liquid fell down from the tear and upon the table, splashing all over the Kings. They let out horrific screeches of inhuman agony as the liquid turned their skin ashen and cancerous, veins bulging with black necrosis only to turn yellow then red. Evros screamed but was cut short as the vile fluid covered her head, mercifully obscuring my vision from what it was doing to her. The table lifted up, the chairs breaking away from it, all of them falling up towards the sky and the mass of wrongness hanging above it all like doomsday waiting for its moment.
“Why is she doing this?” I screamed at Drache. She had barely contained fury on her face.
“That’s the thing, boy. Even after all this time, after centuries of wondering and hypothesizing, I don’t know.” Then the floor beneath me sundered, and without anything to hold me I felt my legs dangle. Somehow gravity was pulling me down towards the portal leading back to my own reality even as the rift pulled Drache up. We locked eyes, and I saw steel in them. “But I intend to find out.”
And with that, she let go of me, and I fell down, down, down towards the waking world, tumbling over and under, my vision turning and tumbling out of control as she spun up and away towards certain doom. I passed through the thin veil at the bottom of the vortex and felt my body righted slowly, gently, as my spirit form realigned with my physical body. When both became one, my eyes burst open and I tried to scream.
Deotra’s hand clapped over my mouth, stifling the outburst. She hugged me tight with her other arm. “Shhhh. It’s okay. I’m here. It’s all over now.” She nestled her head against my cheek, nuzzling me with her soft hair and fuzzy ears. “I don’t know exactly what you saw, but if it was anything like what she showed me it had to be intense. Take a moment. Breathe. I’m here with you.”
I breathed in through my nose, holding the breath a few seconds before shakily exhaling through my mouth. A full minute passed as I forcibly slowed my racing heartbeat, Deotra still holding me the entire time. When at last my pulse slowed down enough, Deotra let go of me and smiled. “There. It’s all over now.”
Shivering, I sat beside my familiar. When I didn’t speak, she embraced me gently, humming softly. I felt the soft, steady beat of my heart in my chest, resonating in time with the pulsing magic within her. My eyelids fluttered, my head feeling heavy. The humming began to drown out all of the sound of the night; no more insects or gentle breezes, just the soothing sound of her voice draping itself over my senses like a warm blanket.
I still have so many questions. There’s so much to ask and I don’t understand anything, I need to know. Now isn’t the time for sleep. The sensation of a hand stroking my head, fingers weaving through my hair, repeating the motion over and over again, cut that thought off instantly. The hum was all I could hear.
The fear, the anxiety, the frantic energy of that turbulent vision was drawn out of me, draining away as the hum became my whole world. I could see, smell, hear and even taste the hum like it was pure euphoria overlaid onto my entire existence. It was my favorite food, song and drink all at the same time, wrapped up in the feeling of sleeping in a comfy bed and the warmth of clean sheets. What is this? Is this what heaven feels like?
Any and all negative thought and emotion left me, exhaustion fading and being replaced with strength, clarity and energy. Whereas before I had been fighting to stay awake, now I felt alert and keen. When I opened my eyes, Deotra was glowing with a soft blue light, the same color as the fire she conjured. That too faded, and we were sitting alone under the starry sky in the night air.
“W-W-What was that?” I was still a bit woozy after the state I’d been in, and my words sounded like they were alien to me at first. Deotra looked at me, her signature gentle smile on her face.
“I just used my emotional transference to take away all the residual malaise from Drache’s vision. Her method is, to put it one way, inelegant. It leaves a serious stain on your psyche. Left unattended it can fester into a full blown malady that brings out the worst in you.”
She withdrew a bit into herself. “I can’t imagine what Drache has gone through, having to deal with all that for as long as she has. She doesn’t have anyone to remove that kind of poison from her, and that means she was sealed for hundreds of years with no way to be free from that. So please, don’t be too mad at her.” Her eyes watered and she smiled wider. “We’re both there for her now. We can help her carry her burden.”
“I have a lot of questions.” I said. “But for now, let’s just say that I won’t say yes but I won’t say no. After what I just went through, all I can think about is sleep.” Despite what I said, I didn’t feel the least bit tired. Deotra’s cleanse had removed all the bad juju out of my mind and I felt better than I had in years. She giggled. “You’re not sleepy. I know. I can answer them when we get to Blossom City. We still have a lot of time.”
Sighing, I fell backward and lay on the ground looking up at the stars. Somewhere around I could still hear Yuzuruha sawing logs. “Alright, you got me. I should finish up my watch first.” Deotra blinked, then laid beside me. My heartbeat quickened, and I knew that her own pulse was as well.
“Can I stay with you until morning?”
Her hand crept along the ground until it was close to my own. Without turning my head too much, I looked in her direction. She was looking at me expectantly. My hand moved over to hers and interlocked with her fingers, tightening as we held them together.
“I’d like that.”