There he sat on his throne. A statue waiting to be painted gold to match his eyes. Sweat was already beading along Airya’s hairline from the heat, or maybe it was nerves because she didn't see a drop on him anywhere.

He stood up when he saw the both of them, "Aesha! Why has she been released without the proper trial? And why is she dressed like that?" he looked to Airya and then returned his golden gaze to Aesha. “The guards said they could not find you for the longest time yesterday. Not until the night. Where were you?”

“I released her, walked with her around the market, joined in on a class with the children, and then talked about all the ways we could sneak out of this kingdom to other worlds.” Aesha had a tease in her step as she walked toward her brother. Even from standing where Airya was behind her, she could see her smile by the way her cheeks had risen.

Sedeth's eyes grew dark to an almost bronze color as he stared at Aesha. Anger was creating stress lines around his mouth, "You will not sneak away from your kingdom."

"Oh, did I say that we planned to," Aesha turned, her smile growing wicked, "I meant that we already did."

It was as if Airya could see the heat boiling inside Sedeth. As if she could see steam rising from around his ankles.

“Arrest her,” he fumed at Airya.

Aesha waved her hand, “She is pardoned.”

Airya had no idea how the power dynamic between the two siblings worked. If Aesha could pardon her with only the wave of her hand against what the King deemed. But she hoped that she could. If not, she would have to portal back to her kingdom before they brought out the stone again that would keep her trapped.

There was silence as Aesha and her brother stared at each other, waiting for the other to make the next move, trying to decide how serious the other was. Finally, Sedeth spoke through gritted teeth, "You did not go to another world."

"Sure did! I had her take me to Ausrine," she dropped her smile and waved her hand like it was nothing.

His eyes didn't leave his sister, "You shouldn't have done that. What if something would have happened? What if you had become trapped there? What if something had happened here and your people needed you?"

"Nothing happened, Sedeth," Aesha took a step toward him. Airya watched as he struggled to steady his anger, "I begged her to. I wanted to see somewhere besides sand."

"I'm not angry at her!" he yelled, losing his temper and pointing at Airya, but he still refused to look away from his sibling's eyes, "I know you. I know how you work and how you convinced her. She doesn't know your duties. You do!"

"I wanted to see her world! Sedeth. I wanted to get to know her. The best way to get to know someone is to see where they come from. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

"You know I can't!"

"You say you can't."

"I can't."

Aesha sighed, "Well, anyway. It’s done. Nothing happened. And I’m still alive and well. It was nothing like I have ever seen before. The ground there even breathed more life than our land. But yes, all her people are dead. There is no one there."

Airya looked down when she saw Sedeth finally look at her with pity.

“Hey!” Aesha yelled, stomping her foot, “Look at me, not her. As I said. I’m fine. I handled myself well. I returned. I feel this proves I should be able to leave our Kingdom.”

“It proves nothing,” Sedeth’s jaw locked into a hard clench. “You went to a dead kingdom. If anything, you proved that you can’t be trusted and should not be queen at all.”

Aesha looked hurt at those particular words, “I made sure she couldn’t hurt me!”

“She doesn’t look like she could hurt anyone!” Sedeth’s nostrils flared, and his cheeks burned a golden red when he looked at Airya. “You need to leave.”

“She will not leave,” Aesha shouted, grabbing Airya’s hand.

Sedeth turned away with a shake of his head, “I don’t want us to fight, Aesha, but I have more power than you do over what is said and done. If you do not make her go, I will.”

With a yank, Aesha pulled Airya with her to leave. The grip of her hand in hers was tight, but Aesha’s shoulders sagged as though she were exhausted and had given up. Aesha wouldn’t turn enough for Airya to see her face clearly, but she swore she saw a gold gleam in her eye like a tear.

As soon as they were out of the room, out of earshot, Aesha let her hand go and slapped her back against the wall, “Please take me back to your kingdom.”

Airya was tempted to look back into the throne room to see if Sedeth was listening or had heard, but didn’t. Instead, she kept her eyes steady on Aesha, who she knew for sure was crying now. “Won’t he call you back?” Airya didn’t let her gaze fall on the bands around Aesha’s ankles, but Airya saw the understanding in the Queen’s eyes when she finally looked up, brushing the wet curls away from her face.

“No. He can’t. Not if I don’t accept. That… that is not… that is not what keeps me here. It’s my duty. Him. I can’t leave my people,” she slid down, bringing her knees up to her chest and let out a sob, “But I can’t not be free too.”

Without another thought, Airya reached out and grabbed hold of Aesha’s hand. Then she opened a portal to her quiet kingdom, pulled Aesha to stand, and stepped inside.

As soon as they stepped through onto the grass, Aesha sat back on the ground pulling at the hair on her head. “Now look at me running away from my own brother.”

No. that was not was she was doing. She was not running. She just needed a moment. Needed a break. Aesha needed a plan to prove her worth. To prove that she could leave the kingdom and still be a good queen.

But how would she do that? How could she prove that?

Maybe if she brought something back. Something that showed that sometimes when Aesha left, it was for the greater good of their kingdom. But Airya didn’t know anything about their kingdom. Not enough to know what they would need.

Except that Sedeth barely walked the ground. That he rarely interacted with his people the way Aesha has.

But Aesha couldn’t be everywhere at once. What if something went wrong in her kingdom? What if there was a fight? An argument? A harsh disagreement? How would the king or queen know when there were so many people to keep track of? Guards, sure. But how else could they keep watch over them that would be more resourceful?

The Queen of Nokia’s people were supposed to be her children. She was supposed to care for them, and watch over them. Was there anything that Airya and Aesha could find to do just that? To make her job easier and show that even if she left briefly, she was still taking care of her people?

Purple glass in the form of a triangle that was its own little pyramid formed its image in her mind. The figurine in the book that the witch had shut. The words that the witch could not understand but that Airya could.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

They could get one of those.

The symbols and how the language had been worded dashed through her head. Beyond the instructional words, there had been a voice of a world there. One that knew of machines. Machines imbued with a purple glass-like magick that they honed, used, and built around.

“I know wha- where we need to go,” Airya said.

Aesha’s breathing grew steadier. Her mouth opened for a moment in confusion.

“We need to prove to your brother that you can leave and still be a good queen,” Airya added.

“Yes, sure, but how?” Aesha worked her way to stand. Airya could tell the determination in Aesha was returning to her bones, along with her composure. Her need to find a way to be free while doing all she could for her people and world had returned.

Airya reached out a hand, opened a portal, and stepped through, pulling Aesha with her without telling her anything else.

They were in a wasteland of broken machinery. Complex pieces of metal, coils, knickknacks, and parts of machines tried breaking into Airya’s shin as she stepped. Her feet tried to curve around the pile of junk as she pulled Aesha through it with her, but they were both having a hard time.

Had she been wrong? She was sure that she had reached for the place with purple glass.

Hethei took off, diving along the trash, letting his wings help him glide while dodging a few straggling pieces of metal that were jutted out of the heap here and there.

“Is this a trash dump?” Aesha exclaimed still holding tight to Airya’s hand. She stumbled when she tried to walk and almost brought Airya down onto a harsh metal lump they had been trying to stand on. “This is trash, Airya. Trash. Why did you bring me here?”

“I just… I thought…” Airya searched for something. If machines and other things were lying below them, it all had to have come from somewhere. It all had to have a purpose.

Airya got up and stepped forward, letting go of Aesha’s hand. She headed to what she thought looked like an end to the sea of junk, but as soon as she did, a puff of purple smoke arose from something she had stepped on. The smoke surrounded them, blinding them.

She heard Aesha cough, and a fear that she was killing the Queen tore through her mind. She couldn’t do that to Aesha’s people, brother, and kingdom. She couldn’t remove someone from them like so many people were taken from her.

Aesha had stopped coughing. Airya felt around in the smoke for her. For her new friend. For the Queen. One of Aesha’s outstretched arms hit the side of Airya’s face. In one quick grab, Airya pulled Aesha toward her and wrapped her arm around her waist before diving away from the smoke.

The brittleness of the machinery pounded into Airya’s back, making her want to scream when Aesha landed on top of her. But she didn’t have time to think about that. She sucked in the pain and tried to move Aesha’s black curls from her face to ensure she was okay.

She was greeted with golden eyes laughing at her.

“What was that for?” Aesha asked. Airya was expecting her to try to roll off of her and help her up, but Aesha didn’t move.

“I just… I was worried. That’s all,” Airya said, her heart pounding in her throat. From embarrassment or from fear still lingering in her heart, she didn’t know.

“I’m fine. I’m tired of you and my brother thinking I can’t handle myself.”

This time she rolled off Airya and helped her stand right as Hethei flew to them and landed on Airya’s sore shoulder. He hooted and then flew off, gliding in the direction Airya had tried to go.

“He might have found a way out,” Airya said, taking a step to follow him.

“Are we staying here?”

Airya shrugged, “Why not see what else is in this place?”

Then another puff of purple erupted from under Airya’s feet.

Strong hands grabbed both sides of her arms to hold her steady and lean her a little to the right, a few steps away from the purple smoke. “It’s just residue magick,” Aesha informed. “For the most part, harmless. At least to the people in the line of gods.”

“How would you know?”

It was Aesha who then took her hand and led her over and around the junk as they continued forward, “It feels familiar. We have stuff like that in our world.” She looked up to the sky, “This might be our world. It just means that they had tried mixing magick with this machinery, and it either expired or didn’t work at all, so they dumped it here.”

When they finally reached the end of the trash, Airya hadn’t expected her feet to be as happy as they were when her slippers met the cool sand.

There was a big opening between two solid rocks that were both the size of her temple. They both walked to it as Hethei flew back to them. They were shocked at what they found.

In the soft sea of sand in front of them, purple lightning was striking down from the sky in a flash of pure power. As soon as it hit the sand and lifted back away, one long strand of purple glass was left in its wake. Then it happened again. They were leaving even more glass. Some were wide enough for Airya and Aesha to lay on like a bed, and others were thin enough to break between two fingers. All the pieces of glass were reaching for the sky, to their home.

The lightning kept striking, piercing the sand, but never in the same spot if a piece of glass was already there.

That was when Airya noticed something a little less majestic.

People were driving out, trying to avoid the shocks of purple lightning, as they made their way over to the glass. They got out of transportable machines in grey-colored suits and used the power of their hands without touching the glass to lift the strands out of the ground and up into the sky. The glass was laid before them on a bed of the machine they had driven in. They then got back into the machine and drove away.

“How are they doing that?” Airya whispered, watching the people behind the lake of sand breaking some of the glass into small pieces and then motioning with their hands as if they had attached strings that Airya couldn’t see. They moved the glass into purple containers. They kept the large pieces in the driven machinery, gleaming in the sun, while the broken pieces they had put into the containers were handed off to someone who walked a couple of paces and then just disappeared.

“It’s magick,” Aesha informed.

There was no way they could get across the field and not be struck by lightning, so Airya called to a portal, walked through with Aesha, and opened another one. She wanted to be taken to the place of magick where the broken glass was.

It had them appear right where the people were working and moving the broken glass into more containers. Airya noticed a yellow and purple large plate of glass in the sand that she tugged Aesha to step onto with her.

They were there one moment and then gone the next. Airya heard Hethei screech behind them, unable to follow. She hoped that he would go back home.

Towering menacingly in front of them where they arrived were walls of purple glass. The glass was dull as if the magick had been taken and sucked out of them to stabilize the giant walls that made up what looked like some workplace that they could see through.

“You there!” someone yelled.

Aesha started running toward the building first. With laughter flowing back to Airya, Aesha took the lead into the building, followed by Hethei, who reappeared through a portal and dove inside.

Airya almost ran into Aesha, who suddenly turned around, “Where do we go? Why are we here?” Aesha asked.

“Triangle,” Airya said, looking around the hall they were in at all the rooms where it looked like people were pushing or pulling magick into or out of floating pieces of purple glass. But the glass they worked with was darker or more vibrant than the dull see-through purple walls around them.

“Triangle?”

“You! You don’t belong here!” they heard the same person yell they heard from outside.

That person was running toward them, with another person in toll.

“Well, let’s hurry up! Look around!”

Airya didn’t want to split up. She couldn’t leave Aesha here if anything happened, so she followed as Aesha ran, stopping only to push her face against the glass to examine all the rooms that seemed to hold different needs.

A few people stopped what they were doing and ran out of a room to yell at them as they ran past. Aesha yelled out apologies to them.

“How can you understand them?” Airya asked as they ran.

“It’s a language I recognize from our world, but a gift of god-lines is that we can understand and speak in other languages,” Aesha stopped again at another wall of glass to peek inside.

Aesha started poking the glass with her finger repeatedly, full of excitement, “There! Is that it?”

Airya looked. It was. There were purple triangles that begged to be taken apart all over a metal desk and even on the floor. One person was making a triangle float above their hands, and another was swirling their hand in the air and condensing some purple smoke that skimmed off their fingers into a ball and then into the small pyramid that widened in size an inch with a new lively violet color once the smoke was inside.

Hethei flew inside the room before Aesha and Airya could make it inside first. He poked at the person holding the pyramid to get the woman away from it, but right when the woman dropped it, making it land on the metal floor with a shocking clang that sounded throughout the entire room, the other person took the purple smoke from their fingertips and made it into something alive. A magic that was a vengeful fire aimed and shot at Hethei. Aesha ran and kicked the man down making the shot of magick shoot up and hit the ceiling with a spout of black smoke.

Airya dove and grabbed the pyramid off the ground but was shoved away by Aesha, who dove with her hands outstretched to roll Airya out of the way of another blast of purple magick with shards of hateful glass. It broke through them, tearing into the ground.

She saw the perpetrator preparing for another round of attacks as Airya made her way to stand, but then she felt magick coming at her from behind. She dove was hit by something, and the table slammed into her head. She fell to the ground.

Blackness welcomed her for a moment before light shuttered the black away and she saw Aesha diving down to her. Darkness came again when she felt Aesha cradling her head. When she tried opening her eyes once more, the light was too bright.

Aesha was messing with her golden bands around her ankles, worry taking over her face. Hethei portaled away before she closed her eyes one last time.