“I am learning balance, Rykaedi. I am learning self control. There are two sides to my being, and I have neglected one or the other for far too long. Heji has offered me—”

“You… you fucks…”

They both turned to Cedric. Begun in a hiss, his voice was now rising to a grand fanfare. A red aura hovered around his shoulders. “You stupid fucks!”

And like a rabid animal, still clutching the limp body of his comrade in silver, he screamed, “Just look what you've fucking done!”

51.

Hard to Say Goodbye

Faunia Vleren gasped awake atop a white infirmary bed hidden behind a bright curtain, beneath a glowing pale magelight. Her heartbeat raced, buzzed inhumanly in her chest.

Her head still ached as well; the mental attack that Rykaedi had implemented was overpotent, unbeatable. At least, it should have been.

The curtain opened. Tirolith stepped through in her suit of ice. A cold chill followed her into the space.

“You should have listened to me.” she muttered joylessly. “I could have killed her. That mental attack was nothing.”

“Tyr…”

“She was testing us, Faunia. Why are you refusing to listen to me?”

Faunia averted her gaze, clutched her blankets tightly. She mumbled something.

“What?” Tirolith approached.

“I don't want you to change, Tirolith.”

The girl furrowed her brow. “...Change?”

“What happened in Alisa, to the First Line… I don't want that. What you did to that torturer—”

“You're speaking of people who wished to see us dead, Faunia—”

“I'm speaking of you!” she shouted. “I don't give a damn about those who want to hurt us, I don't care if that torturer or Kogar or Rykaedi all live or die, if we have to kill those who defy us, who defy order… so what!? I'd kill those azar myself if they were going to hurt us! I'd have wiped out the First Line just as well! But this change…” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don't want to lose you. Fuck Alisa, fuck these Etherians… but you, Tirolith… I can't just let go of…”

Faunia's shoulders shrugged then slumped into shudders of choked sobs.

Tirolith stifled a pout. Her face hardened, though she could not bring her brows back from their raised, empathetic position. She knelt down beside the bed to take Faunia's hand. “Etherians are malleable. We are not meant to be fixed in one state. There will come a day, Faunia, when I will finish my growth; I will become a white one, and I'll be capable of so much more. But I will not be the Etherian who you have grown so attached to.”

Faunia tried to roll over, away from Tirolith. Her left leg would not budge.

Tirolith's gaze cooled into flawless granite. “Rykaedi necrosed half of your body. Half of your body is dead. Incapable. Just as I am able to change… so too are you.”

Faunia peeled her blankets off. Her left leg was blackened, twisted, shriveled up beneath a mess of bloody bandages. She looked to her arm, numb and not so flexible, slightly darkened, slightly aching from the throbbing bloodflow.

The flow of tears from her eyes doubled. Her breaths were hissed gasps.

I can heal it, Faunia. Eventually, it'll heal.

Then tore open the curtain of her medical partition again. Tirolith looked up and vanished in a flurry of icy snowflakes. As the last flake dispersed, the princess Arobella poked her head through.

“Hello, Faunia. I hope you're doing well, all things considered.”

She gave a meager, tired smile, tried to blot the tears from her eyes. “Thank you. I'll heal. In time, I'll...”

Arobella interrupted, “I wanted to talk to you, if only briefly. There was something that I felt we should discuss…”

The princess sat down politely on the edge of the bed, as gentle as was possible.

Faunia winced as her left leg began to ache and spasm.

“It's about Cedric.”

“Is he okay?” She pressed forward in horrible anticipation.

Arobella put a gentle hand on her shoulder to urge her to relax. “Yes, yes! He's doing well, I didn't mean to alarm you. He was with Kogar and that... woman, things were settled down by the time I arrived. That all was quite a shock, I hear.”

“You weren't at the ball?”

“Something happened, and… Well, I suppose that's what I'm here to talk to you about.”

Faunia's stomach twisted slightly at Tirolith's sudden warning; do not trust her. There's deception in her words.

“I was wondering if you had… a stake, let's say, in your friend Cedric?”

“Excuse me?” Her brow came down in annoyance, though her voice was still rough with despair.

“Well, something happened which I'm sure he mentioned?”

She slowly shook her head. "...Listen, anything between you two isn't for me to know. I have no 'stake,' I don't even..."

“You don't know about what happened in my chamber…?” She stuck a sardonic finger to her lip, playing the fool. “He didn't tell you about what we got up to?”

Faunia's reply was sharp as a knife: “If I'm full-well honest with you Arobella, I don't give any amount of a damn if he fucks you or all the whores in the world — I have more pressing things at hand than worrying about what gets into his loins.”

The princess reared her head back in abject confusion, shock, and frustration.

Not quite what she expected?

Faunia’s eyes flashed a very light blue as Tirolith's power ebbed and swelled in her mind. She said, in a voice that was her own and Tirolith's combined, “You didn't even fuck him — he rejected your advance? I can smell your deceit from all the way over here. I could smell it when you came in. So if this is a little game, a little plot to turn me against my dearest companion — save it for someone of weaker character. Save it for the next group of bumbling dumbasses who wander into this hellhole for you to manipulate.” She let out a disgruntled hiss of breath before she continued, "I knew politics were full of scum, but this is infantile."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

It was then that Arobella stifled a chuckle through a scrunched-up grimace. She lifted her hand, brought it down sharply with her thumb bared to pierce into Faunia's blackened left leg.

“Agh—!” cried the Silver Sword, grappling her blankets. Her eyes bulged nigh out of her skull, her breaths could no longer fill her lungs.

Then Arobella’s smile became cruel. “The stronger the character, the weaker the flesh. At least, in my experience.”

Tirolith reemerged in an enraged step from over Faunia's shoulder. It was all the Hunter could do to mutter, “No…”

And Tirolith stopped. Though her fist was shaking with rage, she stopped.

Arobella cocked her head with that horrible smile still fixed tight to her bulging cheeks. “Can't hurt me? Can't bear to watch me bleed? And such is why your flesh is so malleable. If only you could sever that last moral, the one and only rule which prevents you from harming me. But knights are all too noble. Your honor will kill you in the end. You won't be the first, Faunia Vleren, nor the last.”

“That's enough.” Tirolith hissed, lunging forward.

Arobella leapt up and backpedaled, threw her hands behind her back, her thumb still dribbling with black blood.

And Tirolith's leash was once again pulled taut.

“See you soon, Faunia, and friend. Unless, of course, you choke before we can reunite.”

With that, Arobella swept away through the curtain, left Faunia alone with her twisted grimace and her frozen companion. She thought, I knew coming here was a waste of time... This fucking place...

And then the tears could not be stopped.

X

They'd returned to the throne room at Heji's request in a stunning display of cooperation from the two Etherians, and Rykaedi had immediately mounted the throne opposite Kogar as though she owned it. There the three of them sat, in places of highest esteem, floating high above the low place where Cedric stood glaring with his knuckles turned white. All three of them were no better than enemies, convenient allies, predators and prey, vultures looking for vulnerable scraps to pick through like a buffet.

“Why are you here, Rykaedi?” Kogar finally asked once it appeared that Krynn had opened the floor to discussion.

Her bone physique clicked and clacked with her feeble stretch, like she was trying to reacclimate to the body. “My business is my own. I suggest you—”

“Answer him, Rykaedi.” commanded the king.

Her expression did not change as she lowered her arms. “I'm here for the last piece of Dyosius Maxim.”

Cedric snapped, “Why does she listen to you, Krynn? What's going on here, what aren't you telling me?”

His face was hard like stone. “I am born of dragon's blood, and so Etherians pay their respects to me as they do the dragons from who they steal their forms.”

“...Steal their forms?”

“You didn't know? Etherians are shapeless, you should be aware of that much; they steal their forms from dragons and from men, they mimic our shapes and expressions.”

Ithlo cut into his mind before long, answered Cedric's query. “You're lying. Evra was a dragon from the first, I saw it.”

“In Truth? Ithlo’vatis, show yourself.”

And the white dragon stepped forward from Cedric's form, taking his coat and wide-brimmed had with him. Cedric was left wearing an aura of crimson over half of his body, rippling with his pulsating heartbeat, with his rage innumerable.

Krynn continued, “Evra was not a dragon, and is not, though she may still take the form. Your ability of Truth fills in gaps as you understand them; it is as accurate as your understanding of the world is, hence why Ivalié set about learning everything. Hence why they used Okella to supp his mind, and not the mind of anybody else.”

“How do you know all of this?” asked the white dragon.

“I am a Teller, haven't you heard?" He had plainly become annoyed by that question. "Need I repeat my title again? Have none of you any comprehension of my words?”

Cedric stepped forward and said, “I'd like you to elaborate, rather than repeat. What makes you so—”

“Krynn, have we time for this? There are things I need, ” said Rykaedi, leaning her whole upper body in his direction, “I'm willing to negotiate.”

Krynn held up a hand to dismiss her. “You will remain silent until my say-so. There are things we must discuss—”

“I'm just about at the end of my patience now, so I'll give you just one more chance to answer in plain: will you give me Cedric's life? Sacrifice him to me, and your kingdom remains your own. Defy my request, and... Well, I won't spoil the surprise. But you know what I'm capable of, when pushed.”

Krynn glared at her for a long moment before turning his inquisitive gaze upon the boy in the center of the gold-inlaid floor beneath them. He stared in silence for a long, long time. Then he let out a gentle exhalation, a hiss of consideration before he said, “I will not give you the boy's life.”

Her bone hands clattered as they clapped together. “Then we're done here. Guards!”

BOOM!

The chamber door only a hundred strides behind Cedric exploded from the hinges. Ithlo leapt backwards and fused himself into Cedric's armor again, dilated time enough that they could evade the golden shrapnel searing toward him in a nimble sideways flip.

Then entered two squads of ten guards each, twenty soldiers in mad sprints. They raised pikes high, golden shields in their opposite hands.

And their eyes shone with violet magic.

What strength! How did they…?

Rykaedi splayed a welcoming hand toward them. “Krynn, Lorik, I'm sure you both remember your friend Thrum, yes?”

Krynn’s eyes bulged so far out of his head it looked like he'd lose them. He gripped the armrests of his throne with inhuman strength and nearly toppled out. “Thrum!”

Cedric sneered, “A Sylvet? So that's where they went? Into your care?”

Rykaedi only smiled her bony grin, an image of Miriam's missing flesh still hovering over her like a shadow. “You both had your chances. Now suffer the consequences.”

Cedric summoned his blades, shouted, “Krynn—”

“I know, Cedric!” He hobbled from the throne onto the staircase below. “Your trade offer, the sel! I sent for them a week before you arrived, I told them the exact date to arrive!”

Cedric could not hide his glad surprise.

But Krynn’s mouth held open for a long moment. That was not the whole story. “S-she's subverted fate, Cedric! I don't know how, but… this was not foretold! We're still early!”

Fuck. He turned back to the rushing ensemble of guards, now barely twenty strides away. So that's it, on our own again?

He felt Serkukan behind him.

But I'm not afraid. This is what comes most naturally, after all.

He rushed forward with his blades aloft. Krynn will have to handle his own problems, he's already proven time and again that he's got them all on leashes... I have some immense doubt that he would brandish his heritage so foolishly, so brazenly if he didn't have at least something to back it up...

And up on that pedestal, Kogar finally lifted up from his own throne with a strange peace in his gaze. “That's enough of this, then.”

“Kneel, Kogar—”

“You've lost your grip on fate, Heji — Krynn. Your time is up." Kogar reeled back a fist.

"No! WAIT!" Heji cried.

But the god's hands could be stopped no longer.