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》☆☆☆《

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Ask yourself:

What happens when you don't save the world?


I sit upright on my feather bed while the sun sets over the sea. The tepid breeze is sharp tonight. The brilliant colors across the sky outside my window feel like a mockery, creating hues of gold and pink on the wholly black gown held by golden thread from the ceiling, laid out by the smolder imps to make a suitable impression upon the Heir Apparent. I hate them for it.

By nature, the smolder imps are harsh and merciless - but neutral, and loyal to our family. I have never resented them before, but staring down the pooling fabric of black ink that looks made for a woman and not a girl, I wish they would finish smoldering and become ash.

A soft knock comes through my heavy oak door.

"Strae?" says a boy's voice.

It's Bodja. I keep staring at the dress instead of answering. My cousin's voice is so small and worried, it's hard to imagine that it's really him out in my parlor. He's always daring. Always sure. When I feel frightened of my future, he is my courage.

Only now I don't think I feel anything at all.

Bodja has not given up. "The sun has nearly fallen."

No shit, I almost say back.

"My mother and father asked me to come and see if you were ready."

I clench my jaw. I do not answer. I hate the way that hurts - mother and father. They are my aunt and uncle, not my mother and father.

All at once, I can't breathe. Am I going to answer to my aunt and uncle now? Is that what's happening? I can't look at the dress anymore, so I press my palms to my blurring, wet eyes.

"Viostraeada, we can't start the Sending without -"

"Fuck you and the stupid Sending!" I half shout, half sob.

Bodie falls silent. I don't take my hands away from my eyes and I struggle for air around the gaping hole in my chest. There is no answer for so long that I think I have succeeded in chasing him away.

Another knock. "Just let me in," he says. "Just me."

I lift my reddened eyes, and there is a smolder imp perched at the end of my bed. It's hardly bigger than my palm, and it shakes it's coal black, mouse-like body, scattering embers. It meets my eyes, awaiting instruction, as they always did at just the right time.

"Come in," I croak.

The imp blinks and vanishes in a plume of smoke, appearing at the door to unclick the latch before disappearing again to wherever it is the imps went. The door opens, my cousin steps in smoothly, shutting it behind him.

Bodja's eyes, grey like mine, are reddened too. At thirteen and two years my senior, I'd forgotten what it was like to see him cry - always trying to be the tough guy. He looks like the little blonde boy I remember sneaking through the catacombs with that roped me into pranking our instructors. But he looks lost - as lost as I feel.

"I don't want to go." My voice breaks.

Bodie walks further into the room, eyeing the black gown as he does. He's already dressed formally and entirely in black. Our family always looks so severe in black.

"I don't either," he admits.

The bed bends in as Bodie sits down beside me. I sniff and wipe under my nose, but my lip is still trembling.

"I'll be with you. It's only one night," he goes on, and he scoots closer to wrap an arm around my shoulder.

"But it isn't," I weep, and I hate the hot tears that keep spilling. "It's tonight, and then every night after that, and it will never go away."

Bodie pulls me into him, and I collapse against him in a heap of snot and tears against his chest. He just wraps his arms around me to squeeze tightly. I can't stop crying, and he doesn't say anything. Not for a long time, not until I'm quiet and sniffling again.

"I know," he murmurs against my mess of blonde curls that hasn't been brushed in two days. "And I will be with you, Strae. Always."

I start to cry again, because the loneliness has been so consuming that I am sure I will never feel anything else. I don't want to be alone.

"Mom and Dad won't be," I whimper.

"You can do this," Bodie says, firm and like iron. "I'll help you. I'll keep you safe. We have to do it."

"I wish someone else could take the throne."

"Oh, but then who else but you would get under Priestess Rinja's skin with that sharp tongue and remind her who's in charge?"

Despite myself, a broken laugh makes its way out. "She says a real ruler knows when to shut their mouth."

"And do they?"

I think of my mother and father, the waves they made, how much good they did with not keeping their mouths shut. I half smile and shake my head, but then it vanishes when I look at the gown again.

"I'm just a kid," I whisper. "This wasn't supposed to happen til I was a grown up. The rest of the world is going to watch a little girl take the throne."

"You aren't just a little girl," Bodie says, straightening to make me look at him. He doesn't look like a little boy now. He looks like Uncle Sulkan, so sure of himself. "You're the top apprentice in the academy, and a badass brat that thumps me and my friends on field days. You're the girl that I'm sure will find a real live dragon one day, because you are a dragon, just like the one on our crest. You're Viostraeada Leife Meirasalukk, Heir Apparent. Okay?"

I swallow, and I nod.
"As Heir Apparent, as their daughter… you have to give them to the light. It's your duty."

I rest my head against him, and I watch the smolder imps appear on plumes of smoke about the room. They are glowing with a faint and orange warmth - they agree with him.

"When'd you turn into such an old fart," I grumble on a sigh.

Bodie snorts and shoves me a little bit. "We're royalty, we're basically adults when we're born."

That sounds silly to me, and it makes me smile, shaking my head. I straighten my back and look at the gown. Black, so that there was nothing to take away from the beauty of the Sending. Everything would be black. Everything but the white silk for her parents.

"Tell Aunty and Uncle that I'll be down soon," I say, and Bodie gives my shoulders a squeeze. "We'll send the King and Queen to the light."

---

》☆☆☆《

---

It is well after midnight when the revel is in full swing - we are a people of the night, and so we rise when the shadows are long and bed when the stars pale. Winter has slowed the world and stretched the night - our favorite time of year.

From my seat upon the throne, I lounge back and take periodic sips of Imp Wine. Its tickling electricity as it goes down keeps me buoyed, keeps me from slipping away to find sanctuary in the star-imp filled meadows or wade into the phosphorescent seawater outside.

There are hundreds of the Nocturnian people here - my people, filling the vast throneroom of the Hollow Mountain - tall and elegant people with familiars and alternate forms: long-haired men with feline eyes, silver-skinned nobles in fabric made of smoke, hedge witches with their nature-hewn garb and plethora of familiars, different breeds of imps flickering about the families they are bound to. Star-puffs hover in the cavernous ceiling, glittering off of the crystal stalactites. They dance, they drink, they laugh, they scheme.

Not for the first time, I envy their magicks and mysteries. I can see why foreigners succumb to the beautiful nightmare of Nocturnia, why they willingly drown in it. I know I shouldn’t envy it as I do - as their queen, I have no such right.

Bodja shifts beside me, for once moving from his stoic, stubborn position standing beside my throne. I tilt an eye up at him, raising both brows. His eyes are narrowed thoughtfully across the crowd.

“Is my bloodsworn finally going to sit his uptight ass down?” I say.

“Did you invite him?” he says without looking at me.

I follow his gaze to the man who snared his attention, leaned against a rock alcove, drinking wine from a silver cup. His ears are long and tapered, dark hair long down his back, and he is staring right at me. I tense every muscle.

“What makes you think I would invite him?” I practically hiss through my teeth.

Bodie’s hands curl, and a blue flame winks to life in his palm. Magically blessed where I never was. “The summit isn’t for another three nights.”

“Apparently Lord Dagh thought to have my ear before the others.”

“Allow me to point him to a tavern down in Cloudless. They’ll take the rat.”

“Rats are much cuter than him.” I glance up and smirk when I see I’ve cracked a smile in my cousin.

Prince Achyon Dagh, first-born to the Wilde King Dagh of Themysca, and the absolute worst of his sons. He is wearing his usual scowl, his long black coat with a high, jagged collar, the whole thing stitched together with silver filigree. He meets my eyes again, and as if I had granted him permission, he is striding across the floor.

“Shit,” I growl. “Where do you think his father is?”

“I don’t know,” Bodie says. “He is an old man. Maybe he cannot make the journey beyond Cloudless.”

“You don’t think he’s dead, do you?”

The Themyscan Prince is gaining attention, cutting across the dancefloor the way he is.

“Stars help us if he is. That would make Achyon their king.”

Then the prince is too close for us to safely talk about him. He is smiling when he approaches, and I’m not certain my answering smile is cordial or threatening. He drops a knee and bows, as any sovereign must when not in their home country. Niceties begin and end there. We are in Nocturnia, and the games are different here than beyond Cloudless.

“Your Majesty Viostraeada Leife Mierasalukk,” he purrs, and rises to look up at me upon my throne carved of obsidian and ruby.

I sip my wine, eyes on him over my glass. Get out, I want to say. But I will not risk offending him so close to the summit, and he knows it.

“Prince Achyon. No present for my birthday party?” I tsk, and I’m rewarded with a clench in his jaw. “What brings you so soon before the summit? I didn’t expect to see you without your father.”

He smiles, like he did five years ago when I had put a knife in his gut when I was only thirteen. He hated me before then, rising to my throne so young, but he hardly tolerates my heart beating now. It makes my mouth go dry. It makes my heart race. His father had forbidden him from vengeance, but I wish he hadn’t. The waiting is worse. Blood feuds in the Skylands can last generations.

“I do come bearing you a gift, Your Majesty,” he finally says.

I raise my brows and glance around the room. I spot my aunt and uncle nearby, abandoning the party to keep a watchful eye. Bodja does not take his eyes from Achyon. I look back at him and tilt my head expectantly.

“I free you from your duties of the summit - I know how you hate them,” he states. Frankly. Pleasantly.

I blink. “Excuse me?”

His smile grows, and so does my unease. “I have cancelled the summit.”

“You have no right,” I bite out, setting aside my wine. “The Grand Summit is a gathering of Kings and Queens, prince.”

He holds up a placating palm, still grinning. I want to knock the grin right off his stupid face, to see his yellow eyes go wide with shock. But then he gestures like a ringleader in the circus toward the cavernous door to the throne room. My eyes narrow, and for a moment, I think he’s playing me for a fool.

But then there is a single woman, dressed in simple clothes, dark hair pulled back, face blank, and dragging a sack behind her. The music still plays, and the sound of the sack pulling across the floor hisses in time with it. She stops beside Achyon, and he meets my eye for only a moment before he steps back, and she dumps the sack between us.

Wet, round things tumble across the pearl dragon emblazoned on the floor. The music stops when the screams begin. It takes me a moment to realize why Bodie has placed himself between me and the prince, why the guards and gentry all drew their weapons and magic.

There were twelve heads spilling from that sack. Their eyes are empty. Their tongues hang out and their lips are blue - men and women, adorned with crowns crammed so far down onto their skulls that it split their skin. They do not bleed anymore. They have been dead for a while.

Gods, oh gods. People have fainted. Someone has vomited from the smell, and I wish I could too.

“There is no Grand Summit for there are no kings or queens left, Viostraeada,” Achyon says, and the only reason I can hear him over the ringing in my ears is because he is calling out to her - and to the entire room. “They left their homes, and they will not return! No, there are none left. Save for you.”

He is pointing an accusatory finger at me. My body knows what to do before I do. With a roar I lunge from my throne, and my sword finds its way into my palm. I should have ended his miserable life when we were children - I will let his head join those on the floor.

“Straea!”

Bodja’s arm wraps around my waist and yanks me to the side. An arrow the length of my entire leg thuds deep into my throne - it would have taken my head clean off. I stare in horror, and chaos begins to rain down upon the Hollow Mountain.

“We have to go,” Bodie said, his breath hot on my ear as he pulls me off the dias.

I thrash against him as soldiers began pouring in from the ceiling, landing perfectly, as if they were truly part feline. Armored and armed, none of my people stand a chance against them. They will be slaughtered.

I land a sharp elbow in Bodie’s ribs, and he is forced to release me.

People try to run for the doors, but their way is barred by more weapons. Its easy to know when the killing begins. True terror bleeds into their screams. Horror. Panic. Achyon is headed straight for me through the din.

I have wanted nothing more than I wanted his blood.

He twirls his sword, and I level mine - he is no match for me, he never has been, and so I bare my teeth to charge --

A wall of blue flame erupts in front of me, and I pull up short just as another arrow disintegrates in the flames. An arrow aimed for my heart.

“Run, Strae,” Bodie snarls, and he grabs my wrist to haul me after him. “We have to run!”

He does not give me a chance to consider. He hauls me after him, and I nearly trip over myself trying to keep up. I don’t want to run. I keep looking back, and there are more bodies on the floor than there are running. I do not see a single imp. For a half a second I see Uncle Sulkan cutting down a soldier, but then he vanishes in the throng of violence. I can hear them screaming, my people --

A roar splits the air, and the entire Mountain shakes with it. I cry out when Bodja does, and we both tumble to the floor. My knees crack against the stone, and I think that perhaps the Dragon has come to save us, to save our kingdom.

But the ground keeps shaking. Crystal begins to clatter down from the ceiling. The roar was not a roar.

“What’s happening?” Bodie says as he helps me to my feet, holding steady against the wall at the back of the room.

I stare up at the ceiling. I can feel the ground cracking as more stone and crystals fall. “Go,” is all I can say. Go, go, go, go, go! I’m shouting it now as I shove Bodie towards their private crawlspace - the one they hid in as children and snuck out into the world through.

As we vanish into it, I spare one last glance behind me at Achyon - standing before my throne, grinning as my beloved mountain crumbles at his feet.

---

》☆☆☆《

---

As dawn breaks, I enjoy the last of the cool night air as I strip off my court dress - stained with blood and dirt and dust. I feel hot all over. My skin is too tight, and my heart won’t stop racing.

I’ve seen death before many times. I’ve been witness to last breaths, I’ve had a hand in a few, but none had been so terrible and absolute as this night. I don’t know how many I killed on the way out. I don’t know how many of my people are alive, if any. I don’t know how I’m alive. I can still smell the burning flesh the Bodie had left behind us.

I think about going back. I stand there in my slip on the edge of the tiny island we’d found for ourselves after we took the rowboat from the lighthouse in Cloudless. I can see the Hollow Mountain across the glowing bay - or what’s left of it. Half of the great monolith, swathed in clouds like bandages, has caved in.

“How did this happen?” I say out loud.

Bodja appears beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. His shirt and shoes are gone, and he smells like smoke more than usual. “He must have run them down on the Spineroad. Caught them all before the summit, so the worm wouldn’t face the curses.”

“How did his men get in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where was the Magma Guard?”

“I don’t know, Strae.”

“What the fuck do you know?” I spin and walk across the pitted volcanic rock, to the small patch of greenery growing at the center.

It isn’t fair of me to say. He knows it. I know it. He lets me go - it’s not like he can’t see me, the little island is hardly bigger than a bedroom. All I can see is Achyon’s face. I hate him. I hate him so much that I can hardly breathe. I drop to my knees in the sparse grass, listening to the water lap at the stone. As the minutes slip by, I cannot escape the horrible reality that I had not seen this coming, and that I had abandoned my throne.

I am not okay.

I am not okay.

I am not okay.

But when Bodja tells me it’s time to go and we load into the rowboat again, he can’t tell, and that’s the important thing.

It has been a long time since I have been in this part of the world. It’s like walking in a dream. The closest I have been to home in three years has been Cloudless, and the region beneath the mountain does not have visual access to my mountain. It’s hard to be inside and to be a stranger, for people that are not mine to be skulking the halls of the Hollow Mountain.

But I am ready. Steady within the beams build across the newly constructed throne room and staring at the cracked image of a dragon on the floor, I am ready.

Ryx speaks up beside me. “You remember the deal, right princess?”

I turn to glare at the man, at the smirk on his stubbled face, his dark hair flopping in his eyes. “The Mukahla’Maru is yours when I sit back down on that throne.”

“Mine. You leave us be.” He is dead set on it. I have asked him before why he wants to rule a narrow valley surrounded by volcanos. All he has to say is that no one else wants it.

He looks back down at the throne room - the servants bustling about, preparing a massive firepit in the center, and we wait, and I try not to fidget. This has always been a part of my training with Ryx - probably the aspect he thinks is most important. He has told me again and again that most of being sneaky is waiting.

It pays off. Beneath me, I spot my Uncle striding in beside the self-crowned worm. The sight of Achyon’s face has every muscle quivering, but it’s Uncle Sulkan that infuriates me the most. The filthy traitor destroyed everything. Destroyed my cousin. My chest burns.

“Easy,” Ryx says.

I have to wait for the signal from Bodie, when he is ready to set this place ablaze. I wish I have him at my side instead of Ryx. I wish I could comfort him. I wonder how badly he’s hurting, looking his father in the face from the shadows.

I watch Sulkan and Achyon dismiss every servant as they approach the pit that had become a pyre of driftwood. I cannot hear what they are saying, but I don’t care. It is enough to make me nauseous just seeing who I had once considered my uncle.

“Take the shot.”

I’m startled by Ryx’s voice, and I look for Bodie’s signal. I see the blue flash of light on the other end of the throne room, hidden from anyone’s sight on the ground.

My hands feel sweaty as I draw out my miniature crossbow, seeking to steady it against my arm. They turned my home into a house of butchery. I have trained for this. Listed after. My principle childhood memory is of bloodshed. I have killed already before. And yet, for a moment, I am not sure I can do it.

I think of Bodie’s face when he realized his father had betrayed them all.

I take a breath and loose the bolt. My arm spasms from the recoil. The bolt slams home, straight into Sulkan’s chest. He topples. I press myself down against the beam, camouflaging myself as Ryx has taught us, as I hope Bodie is doing. I wait for the horror to hit, like it did every time blood stained my hands. But what I feel is a nervous, adrenaline-soaked readiness. I have passed some kind of threshold. Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer.

I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.

Next to me, Ryx curses. I peek up over the edge of the beam, and my eyes go round. Achyon appears unphased, hands clasped behind his back and watching with that stupid smile as Sulkan pulls the bolt clean out of his chest. He isn’t even bleeding.

“How is that possible?” I breathe.

Ryx has gone pale. “It isn’t. It fucking isn’t.”

“Welcome home, Viostraeada,” Sulkan calls up to the ceiling. I can’t see his eyes, but I can feel them. “You’ve come in time for the Transition.”

The what?

And then I’m not in the rafters anymore. I’m not up in the air. I blink, and then I’m on the ground with Bodie and Ryx on either side of me. Face to face with Achyon and Sulkan, and… oh, gods. I can’t move. I can’t move, I can’t even speak --

Bodja and Ryx are both suffering the same fate, their eyes big. No, no, no, no. Panic is rising like a tidal wave in me, and I am powerless as my uncle steps forward to smile down at us. It isn’t him anymore - not the man Bodie and I grew up with. His eyes are different. His pupils too big and too dark.

“Take a seat,” he says, and then we are forced to the ground with our backs to the pyre. “We weren’t going to have an audience for his Transition, but who better than you, my son and niece of the Nocturnum Dragora Empire. And… the extra.”

I want to spit in his face. As it is, all I can do glare hatefully and try to hide my fear. No one has magic like this. No one.

“Questions? The Transition of the Wyrm, Viostraeada. You should have paid attention in the academy. I encountered a learned people in my Blackland exploits. They gave me the white ember.”

No.

It’s not possible to raise the Wyrm to the Skylands unless a kernel of it’s flame is brought to the height and heart of the Skylands - to the Hollow Mountain. It cannot be, for that would mean my uncle is an agent of the Blacklands, and always has been. That would mean he has been deep enough in this cult to try and raise the very Wyrm that brought half the Skylands down and created the Lowlands. All the people I am fighting for - to liberate, to serve - they’ll die. Billions will die.

The three of us can only stare helplessly at the broken dragon image in the floor as unnatural fire begins to crackle behind us. I can only stare helplessly at my cousin and my friend. The fire would build higher, hotter, until it could burn a hole through the mountain itself, as the stories say.

It can’t end this way. Not like this. For years, we fought and survived to get back here, back to our home.

My uncle drops the ember onto the fire, and while I cannot see through the brilliant, blinding flare of it, I can feel Ryx and Bodja both leaning into me. As if we could protect each other from the end of days, and the crushing knowledge that we were not enough to stop it.

311 PC - Leafchange

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I was pretty fucking sure I was dead.

I'm sorry but What the Fuck.