Chapter 99 A Hero’s Ailment (Part 1)

The Requiem and the Cradle warred inside my left arm. I felt their Essences mix. Beginning met Ending, and Ending met Beginning. There was pain. Almost enough to take my breath away. Not enough to make me stop what I attempted. I held out the arm, and what left it was only Bloom. The Cradle had won. The white fire reached for the tree closest to me and did nothing.

I clicked my tongue. I could now use either of my powers from either limb. Given that, it should have been a simple thing to use Turn from one limb as well. The only barrier that had ever mattered -to use both powers at once- was one I had long since crossed. It did not work. I could use Turn one try in two when the powers met in the space between my cupped hands. From a single arm, I could not use it at all. I was not annoyed, but I was close.

I sat cross-legged in the dirt, in a forest that was not a forest. I had come to this chamber once before, the day after I had dueled Lena. I had practiced Turn then too. Edda had said this place would likely be free this early in the morning, and so we had come, and it was. Whatever class called itself Basic Survival had not yet begun its day.

Everything I had made here last time was gone. Someone had put all of it back to exactly what it had been before I ever touched it.

Beside me, the Hero continued her reading. She had been at it since we had woken, and she had not stopped. Arianrhod had given us two days to say our farewells. One of them had been spent. I, wisely, chose to spend the time left training. To get any advantage I could get. For I had read all of these accounts, and these Blighted Lands would not be simple with the powers I now had. Ash… Ash simply read.

The tome in her lap was one I had finished only yesterday. It was a collection of tales from the Great Hunt, and it spent most of its pages on the part that had nothing to do with the fighting at all. What each party had carried out of the Blighted Lands to lay before the Divine. What the Divine had given them in return. And here and there were a few lines said to have come from the Divine herself as she had rewarded those she deemed worthy of it. I had read those lines yesterday and thought little of them. I watched Ash's eyes now, and she was paying this useless tome far more attention than I had been yesterday. If it had been my choice, we would not have taken this one at all.

"Ash." I reached over and prodded her knee. "Did you discover anything new?" Perhaps she saw what I had not.

Ash looked up at me. For a moment she was looking through me, rather than at me. Then her eyes focused. She looked back down at the tome. "Not really. Nothing I didn't already know, anyway."

"Then why do you continue to read?" I asked her. "If there is nothing to be gained from the reading?"

"It's-" Ash was quiet. "I don't know. Maybe there's something I missed." Ash returned to her reading. She returned to it with a fervor I would never have expected from her. If this had been the only strangeness in the Hero, then I might have dismissed it as her usual foolishness. It was not.

I had woken after the Hero, and when I had, she had been reading then. Her reading had continued in the mess hall. I had walked the halls of the Academy and half expected to turn around and find her still reading mid-stride. This was not even the first time I had asked her, nor the first time she had given me the same answer in slightly different words.

Tomorrow, a woman would cut the air open and take us somewhere far away. She would set us on the path to danger. And the Hero, who knew this as well as I, had not spent a single second training for it.

"Are you injured?" I finally asked. "If something ails you, then my Cradle can heal it. You need only ask."

Ash looked up at me, and I saw guilt on the Hero's face. Guilt for lying, perhaps. She had not technically lied, for I had never asked the question. She should have told me anyway. "No," Ash said. I thought that would be that. "It's… it's not that kind of thing," Ash said. "I guess I just need a little bit of time, that's all. I'll be alright."

She regarded me. I slowly nodded, for I did not know what to say.

I am not a fool. Only one thing had changed between today and the day before it. We had visited the Athenaeum, and we had learned of this Great Hunt. We had learned much, and of all the learning, only one thing could have bothered Ash so. This Divine. I had thought her some strange God I had never heard of. I now suspected she was the Saint who had killed Ash. Ash suspected it too, and she knew this Orvyn far better than I. But I had been slain, and the one who slew me now slept at my side, and I had made a retainer of her. The world had changed. Why this troubled Ash so, I did not understand. Only that it did. Only that I did not know how to fix it.

There was a loud chirp. I turned toward the line of trees. For one second, I saw nothing. In the next, there was a small orb rolling toward me. Black and gold over black and gold. Solara stopped one pace away from me, waddled forward, and opened her beak. Something fell out of it.

I leaned down to look. It was an insect. One called a beetle, if I was not mistaken. The red of its shell caught the light as it crawled, slowly, across the dirt. I looked at the creature for a time. Then I looked toward Sol. She stood tall, her chest puffed out. And she chirped. Once. Twice. I did not understand. I checked the bond, and through it I found a longing.

She was preening. I had seen this before. My Generals had stood so before my throne, back from one assignment or other, asking for something sweeter than the victory itself. I had pretended not to see it, then. I reached down and brushed the top of Solara's head. She let out a trill. "You have done well, Solara," I said. With my other hand, I pointed at the beetle, which was making its escape beneath the nearest rock. "One day, you will bring me the head of dragons. For now, I will be content with this."

Solara let out another chirp. Then she turned, and she was rolling again, back toward the line of trees. I suspected she was going to hunt more creatures.

There was a laugh from my side. I turned and saw Ash's lips trembling before she covered her traitorous expression with her hand. I would have said something. But the look on her face was one I had not seen today. I would allow her the mirth. I reached toward the books instead, for the one on Tenets, and I read.

The difference between a Sigil and a Line was simple. At Sigil, the mark truly became a part of oneself. The ultimate expression of that was the Tenet. To have the mark's power manifest on the skin. It seemed there had been much study done on the nature of Tenets, and yet there was still a feeling of… mysticism when these writers spoke of them. Everything I had ever read about these marks carried that same air. The people of this time did not entirely understand how their own powers worked, and when they did, they spoke as if one could do everything right and still not get the result they desired.

The Tenet was much the same. But thankfully, not entirely the same. The first step to reaching the Tenet was called Expression. Manifesting the Tenet of a mark in an object first, before one tried it on their own body. I had read an account of a practitioner who had tried with his own body first, and had met a fate even I might hesitate to inflict upon another.

The account beneath it was gentler, and shorter.

Six months with the Essence disks now. I press my mark into one and it stays one. I press harder and it stays one. Yesterday I pressed, and did not push, and there were two. The master says the body is next. I have looked at my hands the whole of this night. Tomorrow I will try the disks again.

I reached for the closest blades of grass. My gaze found Ash. She was still reading, with the same focus she'd had before. Her brows were furrowed, and- no, she was not reading after all. Her eyes had taken on that same glassy look. One that saw, but did not read. The look of a person who was not where they were. Where Ash was instead, I could not guess.

I turned away and back to the grass. I channeled Essence, and willed the Requiem to move from me to the blades. Nothing happened. I pushed harder, and what left my fingers were lines of Ruin. They met the grass, and the grass became nothing. I clicked my tongue and tried again. Another patch of grass became nothing. I tried again, with the same result. There were now five patches of bare earth in front of me. Not one of them had become the Requiem, as the tome had said.

I tried with my left, willing the Cradle to answer. Bloom left my hand and met the grass. Some of the dried-out stalks greened again, but none of them became the Cradle. What I had done was use my powers as I always had. To use a Tenet, one needed to channel their Expression. What that meant, it seemed even the writer of the tome did not know.

I sighed. I did not mind starting at the beginning of a long road. My own rise to power had not been fast. It had not come without struggle. What I took offense to was not knowing whether I was on the path at all. The System had been good for a few things, at least.

There was a chirp. A loud chirp, far louder than when Solara had last shown herself. I looked toward the line of trees and found nothing. Another chirp came, louder still. I checked the bond, and found… distress.

I was on my feet the next moment, racing for the line of trees. Footsteps joined mine, and I knew Ash was not far behind. There should have been no danger in this chamber. We had seen much of it, and there had been nothing worth guarding against. The Requiem stirred, and I let it. If anything had touched even a single feather of Solara, I would-

I reached her. She was next to a particularly large oak, and she was rolling. I stopped. In front of her was a small brown creature, only slightly larger than Solara herself. I had seen its like before, only once. There had been two of them then. There was only one now. The creature's tail was larger than the rest of it. It stood on its hind legs, its tail puffed high over its back.

Solara rolled into the creature. The creature let out a strange squeal right as Solara barreled into it, and both Solara and the bushy beast fell sideways. The creature rose quickly back onto its hind legs. It took a single step forward. Solara rose again too, and she let out a mighty chirp. Then another. Her beak opened, and what left it was a whisper of fire. The brown beast stared, and then it darted to the left. Up the tree. It climbed quickly, and reached one of the lowest branches within moments.

Solara waddled to the base of the tree and chirped up at the beast, which regarded her warily from above. Solara's beak opened again, all four wings flared, and I saw the glow at the back of her throat. I stepped forward. "Solara."

The baby phoenix paused. She turned around and regarded me with her golden eyes. She let out a smaller chirp. And then another. I knew what she was doing. She was cataloguing that strange brown beast's many offenses, one by one. She was telling me the beast deserved death for its many insults. And perhaps it did.

"Solara," I said again. I leaned down, until I was level with her. "A Queen must show mercy, occasionally. If the beast has given you some insult, then tell it your mercy only extends so far."

The baby phoenix looked at me with an almost absurd amount of focus for something still so small. Then she turned around and chirped up at the tree. Angrily. The brown beast climbed farther up the tree, until it was gone from sight. It had met Solara and chosen to flee.

Ash stepped forward. She looked up into the branches. Then she looked back down at Solara. "Why are you picking fights with squirrels?" she asked.

So that was the name of the beast, and a strange name it was. Squirrel. I would remember it. Solara looked up at Ash and let out a long squawk. Ash sighed, reached down, and brushed one of her feathers. "You're saying it picked a fight with you?"

Solara let out a soft trill at this, which I chose to interpret as a yes. Ash sighed again and looked at me. I understood her concern well enough, even if she did not say it.

"Solara." She slowly turned toward me. "One day, you will be the Queen of every beast." Solara puffed up her chest at this assessment, as if she had understood every word. Perhaps she had. "But for now, you are small." I poked at her chest with a finger. It sank into her feathers, and it was enough to tip her over. She fell onto her back with a tiny thud, righted herself quickly, and chirped again. "That squirrel creature was bigger than you. Wait until you gain more power. Then challenge whoever you wish-"

"Lys, that's not exactly what I meant," Ash said.

"I know," I said. "If you wish to fight something larger than you at present, then tell me or Ash. We will make sure nothing remains of them."

Solara let out a trill at this. Ash let out a groan. Was this not what she'd had in mind? I moved to cup Solara in my hands. The baby phoenix settled, and I rested her between my horns. We walked back to the place we had come from, by the stream. We were not alone.

Ren lounged by the stream, her legs dipping in the flowing water. Edda stood a few paces from her. Her mark flared, and I saw the air around her shimmer blue. Perhaps she was doing her own training.

They both turned as we approached. Ren waved. Edda nodded. I did not recall inviting these two to join us. But considering today would be the last we saw of them… perhaps it was not entirely unwelcome. Corin, I assumed, was at his classes.

"Ash, can you help me?" Edda said. "I'm trying to use my mark faster, but I can't figure it out."

Ash walked toward her. "Sure. What can I help with?"

I walked to the place I had abandoned in the dirt. It happened to be a few paces from Ren.

"Ah- this is the life," Ren muttered, eyes half-closed. "Way better than stupid fucking classes."

I ignored her and slowly set Solara back down. She let out a tiny chirp, then began her waddling. A waddling that turned into rolling in front of me. I reached for the book, and read.

I read the same line four times. I looked up from the book. Edda had set her feet, and Ash was throwing fists at her. Slow ones, at first. The blue glow around Edda's forearms flickered into a haze of blue before each blow landed, and flickered out again after. Ash threw faster and faster blows, and each time that blue glow came. So that was what she was trying to learn. To call the mark only in the instant it was needed, and not a moment before. It was a sensible thing to want. A difficult and risky thing. I could respect one trying to make more of their power, however meager.

Then a blow came that was not like the others. It struck Edda's guard before she could use her mark at all. Edda staggered back two steps and winced.

"Sorry," Ash said. "Sorry, I- I didn't mean to."

"It's fine," Edda said.

I stared. That blow had been too fast. Far too fast. Ash had been slowly teaching the girl, and so she of all people should have known the blow was too fast for her. And yet Ash had thrown that punch anyway. It was a wonder Edda had taken it as well as she had. Perhaps Ash had held back at the last moment.

It was not a punch the Ash I knew would have ever thrown. Not unless there was something wrong with her. And there was something wrong with her.

"Let's go again? Somewhere with more room?" Edda asked. Ash nodded.

They moved off together, several dozen paces down the stream. I looked at them, and then I looked back down at the book.

Something bumped against my knee. Solara had rolled to a stop beside me. She righted herself and looked to the place where the two of them had gone. Then she looked up at me. She let out a single slow chirp.

"Honestly, I could spend all day here." I turned back to Ren, who was presently reaching into the stream to pull out… a fish. One she had caught with her hands. She let it back into the water.

This was the girl Ash had gone to for assistance before. The one who had given Ash a book that she had kept from me, even now. One Ash had consulted for one of our conversations. A conversation that had clearly been as important to her as it was confusing to me. It was a mad thought. But a Demon Queen did not become great by relying only on herself. She had her retainers to do what she could not, and while this Ren might pale beside the Generals I had known, she could still be useful. In some small measure.

I had stood outside a door once, in Hamel, and listened to a Hero weep on the other side of it, and I had walked away. I would never walk away from Ash again.

"Girl."

Ren turned. "What? I'm just enjoying myself. I'm not even being lo-"

"You will help me," I said. "Help me fix Ash."

Ren's mouth slowly closed.