Chapter 105 Farewells.

Alisa pressed her hand to one of the pages, and the silver walls thinned, and sank, and were only paper again. She went around the square gathering them up, one by one. The page I had drawn she held a moment longer than the rest, before it too vanished into her bag.

Then we sat in the grass. No one suggested it. Ren dropped onto her back first, arms folded behind her head. Edda followed, and Corin after her, and Alisa sat a few paces to my left with her knees drawn up. Ash and I lay down together, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched. I closed the distance and made them touch.

The moon hung high over the yard. The grass was cool beneath my palms and against the back of my neck. Solara waddled up my side and climbed onto my stomach, where she tucked herself into a warm, round weight that rose and fell with my own breathing. I brushed her feathers idly with two fingers. It was not displeasing.

"So what's Eryn actually like?" Ash asked. "You've all mentioned it, but never really talked about it."

"Small," Edda said.

"Really small," Corin agreed.

"It's at the ass-end of the whole kingdom," Ren said. "In the middle of bloody nowhere and surrounded by nothing. There's only like 50 people and-"

"Fifty-four," Corin said.

"Whatever."

They spoke of it for a time. And they had many stories to tell. Ren, when she was a child, had once almost burned down her own hut. The girl had possessed no mark, but had managed the feat anyway by setting flame to far too much kindling. Corin and Edda had saved her, by dumping bucketfuls of water both on the kindling and on her. They laughed as they recounted it. Ren huffed and looked away.

And there were more stories. More incidents. All in a tiny village named Eryn somewhere at the edge of this Kingdom. Through their telling, I could almost picture it in my mind. A place not too unlike Hamel. I had ordered a hundred villages like it burned, in another life, and did not so much as remember any of their names. I listened to every word of this Eryn.

Eventually, the talk turned to the Academy. About its many classes and its Inkers and all of the strange things that happened between its walls. Apparently, the main topic of conversation was a demonblood who had gone down on his knees, to ask a human girl if she would have him. He had done it in the middle of the mess hall. Ren said that the boy had been wanting to do so for a while, and only recently he had found the courage.

The human girl had, against any and all expectation, accepted this strange gesture. They were now 'courting', as I understood it. Though, Edda used the word dating instead. Ash had looked at them with her face half-pink during the tale.

There were more rumors and petty gossip. The Academy was a lively place. I had seen much of it, and yet, it seemed, not nearly enough of it at the same time. It might not have been so terrible to have come to this place without the marks that had set me apart from the first day. Perhaps.

And of the many rumors and the gossip, they spoke of Ilyasviel. Nobody had seen her in days. One of the Crests had demanded an answer from the Archon himself, and had been told that she would be 'gone for some time'. What that meant, nobody knew, only that there were as many rumors as there were stars in the sky. I remembered a white Hydra with twelve heads. A mark that was the cousin to the Beginning. We would see her again. I was sure of it.

"So what's the plan, Ren?" Ash asked. "After the Academy, I mean. What do you want to do?"

Ren did not hesitate. "Easy. First, I become the strongest this Academy has ever seen. Stronger than Ilyasviel, even. Or Lysanthia. Then I go back home, walk right up to that bastard Relen's front gate, and tell him what's what."

She had told me enough about this lord. A man who had laughed at her starving mother after a trip that took three days, and had sent her back on her way.

Ash had turned her head to stare at her. "You mean by... burning his castle down or something?"

"Hell yeah," Ren said.

Edda sighed. "Just ignore her."

"What about you, Edda?" Ash asked. "What do you want to do?"

Edda paused. I turned my head enough to look at the girl, lying in the grass behind us. Her cheeks had gone faintly red. She glanced across at Ren, and then looked up at the moon. "I think I'll have my hands full just making sure Ren doesn't burn everything," she said.

"Hey, don't say it like that," Ren muttered.

"Yeah, yeah," Edda sighed.

"And what of you, child?" I asked, looking at Corin.

He met my gaze, and hesitated. "Well... if Edda is watching Ren, then someone needs to watch Edda, y'know?" His cheeks went faintly red as well, and he looked away, up at the sky.

I did not quite understand, but I understood some of it. Oh well. It seemed the three of them would stay together, then. That was good. I found I would not have liked to see them separated.

Alisa said nothing through any of it. She only listened, her chin resting on her knees.

I rose until I sat. Solara let out a small chirp of protest as she slid from my stomach onto my left thigh. I adjusted her gently, and looked back at the three. And at Alisa, farther to my left. "I will share something with you," I said. "Something you will not share with anyone else."

They all looked at me. I turned to Ash. She met my gaze and nodded. It seemed she knew what I was going to say before I even said it. I raised my arms up, so they could see. A branching pattern of black on my right, and its twin in white on my left. The Cradle shone in the moonlight. The Requiem drank in the night. "These two marks, whose colors I hid when I came to this Academy-" How was I to explain this to them? In their world, what I possessed was an impossibility. Yet I wanted them to know it, and to understand it all the same. "These are both Sovereign marks," I said.

I gestured at Ash, who was raising her left arm. "I have one too," she said.

Everyone looked at us. I could imagine their objections forming. My displays since entering this place had been impressive, certainly, but they were still not-

"Makes sense, I guess," Ren muttered. She looked at my arms, and then looked up at the sky.

"Huh." That was all Edda said, as she slowly nodded.

Corin had the smallest reaction of all. He just gazed at the marks and inclined his head. He mumbled something under his breath, something I did not catch even in this quiet.

Alisa looked at our arms, and then stared at her own Line again. Was the girl comparing her mark to ours? I did not know.

I met Ash's gaze. The Hero only shrugged. I had prepared for many reactions, but none of them had been this. It was rather frustrating. While I no longer wished to elicit fear, as I once might have, I had still wanted... something. "Do not claim that you knew this before it was revealed," I said. I did not know who to say it to, and so I said it to all of them.

"I mean, after all the crazy shit you've done," Ren said, "it's not much of a surprise, I guess. Makes sense to me."

Edda rose until she sat. She looked at Ash. "I'm surprised you don't have two," she said.

Ash just smiled. "I'm happy with what I have. Or at least-" she looked down at her arms, "-happier than I was, once."

She said it warmly, and I thought she meant the Veil too, and not just the Sever. And there was sadness in it, but not as much as there once had been.

I cupped Solara in my hands and rose to my full height. Everyone watched me. I opened my mouth to say something, and closed it without saying anything at all. For in their eyes, I saw that they knew. They knew what this was.

The others do not see it. Perhaps they choose not to. The Queen has been preparing for something, and I have watched her too long to miss it.

Zarvok had known more of me than I had ever allowed him. So had the others. It seemed these children had learned more of me than I had allowed them as well. I saw them sitting in the grass, bathed in the moonlight. And in their place, for a breath, I saw others. Morrigan. Orzathiel. Zarvok. Zera. Seryth. Malrath. The vision did not fit the ones I saw now. Perhaps it did not have to.

"It is time," I said, and nothing more.

They all looked at each other, and slowly rose. Ash rose and joined my side. Her hand reached for mine. I adjusted Solara, holding her in my right arm against my chest, even as my left hand held Ash's right. Alisa slowly crossed the gap and joined us. Three of the four this Hunt demanded. And behind her stood the three.

Ren, Edda, and Corin looked at us for some time. Then Ren sighed. "What the hell. This fucking sucks. Pisses me off," she grumbled. A trail of fire shot up her arm and died at the elbow. "It's almost curfew anyway. So if you're going, just go!" she said, huffed, and turned away.

Edda stepped forward. Ash met her halfway. "Keep practicing," Ash said. "What we worked on. You have potential. Real potential. Most people can't react the way you do, because they're afraid of getting hurt. You aren't. You'll get pretty far on that alone." Then her voice softened. "Just don't overdo it, okay? Just because you can get hurt doesn't mean you should."

Edda looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded, slowly and seriously. She inclined her head for Ash once, and for me second.

Corin licked his lips, and he asked me a question. And it was a strange question. "Are you-" He swallowed. "Are you really Lysanthia?"

The other two looked at him. "The hell does that mean?" Ren said. "She sure as hell thinks that's her name." Edda said nothing. She just watched.

Ash looked at me. I knew, for I felt her shift, and felt the weight of her gaze. Corin only looked at my eyes. I knew the question he was truly asking. "Yes," I said. For I had never tried to hide who I was in this world.

To my left, Alisa's chin, which had been raised the whole of this night, slowly lowered. She looked at me with one eyebrow raised, and said nothing at all.

Corin's eyes did not so much as widen. He bowed, deeply at the waist. "Then may you have safe travels, Your Grace," he said. Edda nodded, and after a moment, she bowed her head too.

And for a moment, I wondered if perhaps I should have simply lied to them. No. I did not want to lie to any of them.

I had come to this city and had my arms bound in colors that were not mine. I had carried an egg that had not yet hatched, a clay bead beneath my collar. A Hero who walked at my side, and yet at a distance. Those had been the only possessions of Lysanthia, the strongest mortal to have ever walked the world.

I would leave it with my arms bare. With a phoenix who had chosen me cradled against my chest. With a strange girl who called herself my rival, and with three stranger children who had seen something of who I was and had not flinched. The distance between me and the Hero was smaller now, and felt different besides. I had not added much to my collection since I had joined this Academy. It still felt like enough.

This new world was a strange place, one that had questions behind every rock I upturned. I did not mind.

I had words for them. For all three of them. "You will grow stronger," I said. "All three of you. And then, one day-" I gestured with my arm, taking in the whole of the yard, the Academy, Koralis itself. "-you will find us again, on fields greater than this one."

They all bowed at that. Even Ren, though she did it only awkwardly. Then they rose. Solara let out a mighty chirp. She flew from my arm and hung in the air in front of them. They all brushed her sides, and she let them. Ren held the bird to her chest, and Solara allowed even that. She murmured something to the bird, something I did not catch. Solara let out an angry squawk, but still let the girl cradle her. Ren both sighed and smiled in the same breath. Finally, Solara chirped once, turned, and flew again. She made it to my head without smacking me at all.

Ren wrapped one arm around Corin, and the other around Edda. "Well, let's fucking go already. They need to leave too. Come on, guys, take a bloody hint." Her voice was strained. Choked. I knew some of why.

Then she was leading them away, to some arguing. I did not hear much of it. I only watched their backs as they grew small. Then they turned a corner, and were gone entirely. Solara let out one last chirp, in what I knew was farewell.

"It will not be forever," I whispered to her.

"They're not bad kids," Ash said. Her hand was very warm, in this otherwise cold night.

"No, they are not," I said.

Alisa came and stood in front of us. The girl had been quiet for some time. She wiped at her right eye. I had not seen the tear at all. It seemed this had moved her, oddly. I had not expected that. "So, what now? How do we make our way to Azareth? The trip is weeks, and even that's with everything going right. Why didn't Arianrhod-" She shook her head. "I mentioned my father before. If we're going by road, then it might be difficult to-" She sighed. "Maybe a caravan company, or-"

I reached into the satchel. A satchel that had once held Sol's egg and nothing else. It now held several books, the Musings of a Fool, a silver bell, and one other thing. We had not told this Alisa just how we meant to make our way to Azareth. And judging from what the girl had said, ordinary travel would be difficult because of her family. This 'Earl.' It seemed he would forbid her from going, if he knew. She should have told me so more plainly. It did not matter. I had already given my word.

"We will move at great speed," I said. "One that will allow no chance for intervention. But first, we will go somewhere else." I took out the silver bell. The moonlight caught it from an angle, and made that part of it shine.

"Are you ready, Ash?" I asked.

"Yes," Ash said. "If you are."

I smirked. "Always."

I channeled Essence, and I rang the bell.