Chapter 98: Deal

Two nights ago.

The angel was wandering through the woods.

She didn’t know where she was going, exactly. The Cascan forest was a very large forest. The forest stretched all the way around the circumference of Mount Casca, spanning all four kingdoms of Loukoumades. It stretched out the thickest in the southern kingdom, Fenlin the kingdom of forests, but it was still of great coverage in every other kingdom.

Ennanis Zoleil had entered the woods from Archizoun after dusk. She kept her feathery wings folded behind her back, choosing to walk on foot. She was hacking through the vines with a shortsword.

“...Amanita was right. A shorter weapon is easier in a forest.”

The canopy of the trees interrupted the dark sky above, dappling the faint blue starlight that dusted over her skin. She hadn’t summoned any Soleki beam; she forged through the thick bramble with her perceptive senses alone, with only the military-grade windbreaker she was wearing to keep her warm in the frigid night. She had been walking for the better part of the night. The handlantern she had been carrying before had burned out, and she didn’t want to spend her last fuel battery unless it was an emergency.

So she continued to wander in the darkness; it was unclear if she even had a direction. She wondered if the sun would rise again before she even managed to find what she was looking for.

But finally, eventually, she did—parting the bushes to a dazzling pool of light.

Ennanis stood, catching her breath as she stared at the moon, once more at her feet.

“You’re like a pest,” Queen Medusa commented as she appeared, a liquid figure in the darkness.

The rose-haired angel merely grinned as she sheathed her sword, a certain mischief to her eyes. “Someone once told me persistence was one of my few strengths.”

The moon could only be found by someone who had seen it once before. As Jemi had once taken Ennanis Zoleil to the moon, the angel was now one of those could find the moon whenever she wanted.

Queen Medusa floated on the surface of the moon, luminous water swirling around her submerged bottom half. Her hair was thick, curling white locks, eerily similar to the Cockatrice’s flaxen waves. But upon a closer look, the locks of Medusa’s hair scintillated, almost like scales. Looking at the ends of each lock of hair, they were heavy and bulbous. Every lock of hair, Ennanis realised, was a slumbering snake, adding up to perhaps thousands of the intertwining creatures, glowing against the lunar queen’s black skin.

Medusa’s eyes were open now. Rather, one eye, for her left eye was gone from her eyesocket, currently in the hands of her prized pupil, the Cockatrice.

“Well, you’re here now. So, what do you want?” Queen Medusa asked. Her once-sonorous voice sounded brittle.

Ennanis tilted her head. “What makes you think I want something from you?”

“What else would you seek me out for?” said Queen Medusa. “An angel has just found the moon. Congratulations. You want my power? You want to kill me? You want to ursurp the moon for yourself?”

“No,” Ennanis replied. “I want to help you.”

Queen Medusa stared back, stunned.

“Kind of. I’m just not sure how to do that yet,” Ennanis amended. “But you can help with that.”

“...I’m listening,” Queen Medusa said, although she still looked sceptical. She clearly expected Ennanis to pull some kind of trickery on her.

“You mentioned before that the Beasts had been planning a coup for a while now,” Ennanis brought up. “They were planning to assassinate the Cockatrice.”

“That is right.”

“Supposedly. However, after I thought about it more, it made no sense. I couldn’t see a good reason for them to do so. Even if the Cockatrice had supposedly become weaker than previously, or was less loyal than before, she was still a useful tool to have on their side. On that last night we fought, she remained an incredible force on the battlefield—I would know better than anyone.”

The Graveyard Commander gestured. “So I thought about it. Why wouldn’t the Beasts want the Cockatrice around, when she only ever acted in their benefit? I thus put myself in the shoes of a Beast. Thought about the differences between the other Beasts I’ve fought before, and the Cockatrice. Every Beast was always desperate for its survival. Only the Cockatrice would risk her survival to protect the rest of the den. That included you, Queen of the Moon. You have a relationship with the Cockatrice that you have with none of the others.”

It was like in elephant chess. In one of the winning strategies, you eliminated the advisors who were always by the general’s side, so that they could no longer get in the way of your checkmate.

The Cockatrice was an advisor, and Medusa was the general: the real target all along.

“The Beasts have no reason to attack the Cockatrice on her own. But they have very good reason to attack you, because the greater game doesn’t matter to them at all. Only their survival does. And you hold the key that keeps them playing: their dependence on your moon’s waters. So, they wanted to eliminate the Cockatrice in order to get to you.”

“Very good,” Queen Medusa said detachedly. “None of this is news to me.”

“Of course it isn’t, o-great-old, all-knowing goddess,” Ennanis said sarcastically. The goddess stared at her flatly with her singular eye, unamused. The angel went on, “So now I ask you. Do you feel threatened at all? By this siege?”

“......”

“You made your Ace join forces with me to protect her,” Ennanis said. “No, I don’t actually need your answer. You areafraid, so afraid that you’ve turned to one last selfless act, even if it sealed your fate.

“But what if it didn’t have to be this way?” Ennanis continued. “What if you didn’t have to sacrifice everything you’ve worked for up till now, even when you lost yourself along the way? You don’t have to be a sitting duck, waiting to be killed by your own subjects,” Ennanis spread her arms. “Not when I have an idea to help you.”

“What are your conditions?” Queen Medusa regarded her. No argument. Medusa really must’ve been desperate.

“You have to answer a few of my questions,” Ennanis said. “Nothing outrageous. Jemi told me quite a lot, already, but she also said you’ve clearly been hiding things from her. So I need the rest from you.”

Medusa, “......”

“And that’s, whatever,” Ennanis waved her hands. “You both love hiding things from people, I get it. No hard feelings. Right now, I’m just going to need more information to plan this whole she-bang out.”

“I do not like you, Angel,” Medusa told her.

Ennanis smirked. “Shouldn’t have entrusted your daughter to me, then.”

Medusa finally rolled her eyes. Eye. “Just get on with it.”

So, the angel commander told her questions to Queen Medusa. Queen Medusa contemplated. Then, one by one, she began to answer them.

Firstly…

“You may have figured this out already. Why the Kraken is able to manifest itself in different elemental forms. The Kraken is not the World-Ender, but rather…”

~~~

“...The World-Protector.”

After her revelation, this was what the Mintoaur Ariadne, told Asha in the Cretan Labryinth.

“When Prometheus brought his star down to this mortal plane, its heat did temporarily breathe life into the world again. But this earth was never meant to have a star so close to it. Soon, its stripping heat cascaded through the earth. Had its magic been allowed to endure uncontested for a second later, it would have burned all vegetation to a crisp, boiled all the rivers to steam, leaching this world of all capacity for life.

“It was thus that, before it could reach the point of irreversible destruction, the world pushed forth a warrior to defend itself. The form this warrior took was called the Kraken. For the original meaning of Kraken was not the sea monster that humans know in their mythology… but rather, it came from the word krake, which means the overgrown tree. From then on, Prometheus’ sun and the Kraken existed in a constant cycle of push-and-pull, and it was only through their tenuous balance could life continue to flourish on this plane.”

The makara-girl listened, pulling on her green braids in thought. Her eyes flashed. “In your words, Prometheus’ sun was a mistake, and that it was harmful to the world. But before Prometheus’ sun, the world was cold and nearly uninhabitable, wasn’t it? His sun was what brought the world back from the brink.”

“Here’s something that you must understand, young Beast,” Ariadne said. “This world has reached near-uninhabitable states several times before. And it was always because of the same species. Humans. Their habit of mass industrialisation came close to destroying the world several times over. One time, they made the world overheat. This time, they made the world too cold. Each time, the Kraken decided to invoke more natural disasters, determined to extinguish the human race, so that the world could make a complete recovery without them.

“But every time, the humans prayed to the stars. Millions of stars agreed not to intervene. Remaining at a distance was what was best for the greater good of the world. And yet, every single time, one of of the celestial gods would cave, and come to their rescue. It was thus that humans were permitted to live on, over and over, even though they never changed their destructive ways. Prometheus was one of them. He never should never have come here.”

Asha was silent. “Without the sun, humans would have been wiped out, but also all other life with it too, wouldn’t it? Animals, plants, fungi, bacteria?”

“Yes. But the world would have regenerated after, allowed the development of new species to repopulate it once more. If it weren’t for the Kraken’s protection, his sun would have burned the world to a point beyond even regeneration.”

“......” Asha regarded the woman before her. “Miss Ariadne.”

“Hm?”

“Are you perhaps, not of this world yourself?”

“Why? Is it because I seem to talk about the extinction of humans and animals as if it did not concern myself?” Ariadne said smoothly. “A fine guess, but I am wholly human. The child between Minos and an ordinary, human woman. You’ll find that many humans speak of their own world in such a detached way, as if it did not concern their own person. It is a unique privilege, to possess an intellect so convoluted it trumps your basic instinct to survive. And I had a lot of time to think down here, after all. …Perhaps I am no longer as human as I once was.”

Asha put up her hand.

“I have a question. Has anyone ever managed to command the Kraken?”

“No, of course not. Magic can be wielded, but the Kraken was born of the world, its own entity—it’s not magic. Magic is defined as something unnatural… but the world is nature, its exact opposite: it can’t be controlled.”

“Then, what if I told you that there was someone who could command it?” the makara said.

“What? That’s not possible,” Ariadne said, incredulous. “You are telling me that you know of someone who can…?”

Asha nodded. “Remember Jemi?”

“The other animal whisperer?” Ariadne’s eyes widened.

“Yeah. She can whisper to the Kraken in the same way you whisper to the spiders, I think.”

“......But even I can’t do that. No animal whisperer I know of can. It’s not something you can wish upon a star for—not even the gods could exert control over the Kraken,” Ariadne muttered. “Why would the Kraken listen to her? Just who is she?”

“The princess of Beasts,” Asha said. “The Cockatrice. She was the first and only human to survive the moon’s transformation.”

Ariadne put her hand to her chin in contemplation. Whoever Jemi Garen was… she was definitely someone very special.

“Could it be…” her eyes shone, “that the world has chosen a new champion?”

~~~