Silence reigned over the Ruby Palace at last. Only the occasional choked sob broke the heavy hush.
Decus glanced toward the steaming bathhouse pool where his wife and five children knelt in prayer on the crimson mosaic floor. They were well. Thank the Eternal Radiance his family was safe.
But weeping grew around him, overwhelming the silence. His heart ached as others in the subterranean bathhouse consulted the Caeles for news of absent loved ones. The fragmented information, incomplete and grossly delayed, could only tell part of the horrific worldwide story. Reports about the fates of distant settlements would not be accessible for many hours without the Trellis to facilitate communication. But the local Compendium already showed deaths in nearby villages, towns, and cities. Everyone would be mourning someone today. Many of his subjects had already been plunged into black pools of grief.
Decus coughed dust particles from his lungs. "Damage report, Basilicus," he asked wearily.
"Um... Um, a moment, please, Augustus," the new acting Princeps Worldholder murmured. The old Pyrrhaei Trellis expert squinted at the Caeles stone cupped between shaking, wrinkled hands, a dusting of bathhouse ceiling turning his bushy hematite brows white. "I... I... The delay, Augustus, it's--"
"Breathe, Basilicus," Buccina soothed. She had dropped her illusions to spare the promenia, the burn scars Decus barely recalled hidden beneath a cascade of smooth black hair. "The worst is over. Breathe."
The Princeps Mindholder's words were a lie, of course. The worst was still yet to come. Soon, the world humanity knew and depended upon would unravel. The repercussions of this cataclysm would reverberate throughout history.
If humanity survived to record any more history.
Decus pushed the grim thought away. He must take this catastrophe one moment at a time, one day at a time. He forced himself to study the Pyrrhaeus beside him as the man struggled to make sense of the fragmented messages the Caeles delivered to the stone.
Collis straightened. "There... there are some reports, Augustus," he said at last. "Just from our ten neighboring capitals, but we may be able to get some preliminary estimates based on their experiences."
"How many yet stand?" Decus asked, heart in his throat. If the worldholders had failed...
"All ten survived intact, Augustus. They are reporting only a handful of deaths in the capitals, though more in their farmlands. Fires from smaller Trellis stones appear to be the primary cause."
"And the Trellis?"
"Reduced to rubble, Augustus, but hanging securely suspended in promenia nets," Collis said after a moment. "The hottest wreckage should supplement sunlight for a few days until we can salvage the material for use in crop lights."
"How long will the stones that reached the surface continue to burn?"
"A couple of days, provided they are not in contact with other stones, Augustus. They fuel one another somehow, but the Trellis stone decays quickly to less corrupting materials, thank the Eternal Radiance. However, we must keep people away from them as much as possible until worldholders can gather the fallen stones up into the nets. And we must scour away the soil in their vicinity."
Decus nodded. Princeps Oliva had warned him about such. People exposed to the stones' cell-warping energies would sicken, especially Pyrrhaei. Lightholders were immune to the deepest corruptions, but among those without prometus, the damage could pass from parent to child for generations.
"And what about--"
"Wait," Collis gasped, then blushed, stammering. "F-forgive me, Augustus, but... but there's news from the Onyx Palace."
Decus studied the man's wide eyes. Perhaps there was news about the cause of Daedalus Adurere's death. "Tell me, Basilicus."
Collis shook his head, looking dazed. "You must not call me that any longer, Augustus. Princeps Daedalus is alive."
<>
Placing one snowshoe in front of the next with care, Luctus picked his way across the frozen expanse outside the ice cave.
Overhead, the sky was once more as black as the Devouring Eyes' cursed bowels but for the diamond stars cast across the Dark Waters. The Trellis isle he and his alumnas so painstaking wove yesterday had been torn down yet again, this time not by rogue promenia but another apocalypse entirely.
He could not help the bitter laughter bubbling up from his belly as he made his way toward the new formation of twisted basalt jutting from the snow amid glowing lights. No bioluminescent blossoms, those. Just giant chunks of Trellis material, burning with the uncontrolled light that once fed fields. He couldn't believe it. Eight years now, he'd worked furiously for that sun-dwelling Rex to prevent the end of the world, only to have it end another way. The planet really must want to purge humankind from the land.
Well, he wasn't ready to go. He'd made it to his one hundred ninetieth year through sheer stubbornness, and by God, he was going to reach his second century. No apocalypse was going to get in his way.
Grumbling under his breath and trying to keep grim thoughts at bay, he approached the fresh basalt formation, eying the scattered, eerily-glowing Trellis stones with caution. Best to give his prometus a little boost before he went stomping around in there. He dreaded to think how the poor fools trapped out there were faring so close to the corrupting energies.
Nudging his prometus to cleanse his blood more effectively of toxins for a few hours, the old worldholder threaded his way through basalt towers and glowing blue-green rubble. Eerily beautiful, the lot of it. Then again, the golden balls of roiling rogue promenia often plaguing this site were too. Maybe Aquarius offered beauty as a consolation prize; a little dose of the sublime to help ease the apocalypse.
He snorted and made his way to his target. The new half-cave arched over the snow like a black wave. The basalt protrusion's tip curled protectively to nearly touch the snow opposite where it had shoved its way up through mantle, bedrock, soil, and several layers of ice.
He'd felt when the thing had formed, of course. Impossible not to, with the Rex's command forcing him and every worldholder to grab at promenia and try to stop the inevitable. As he'd woven his pointless net and caught the crumbling Trellis over some distant capital pulsing in his awareness, he'd sensed the pair of newcomers. Or rather, he'd sensed their arrival, promenia carving serrated wings of air for lift. He'd sensed them take hold of the falling Trellis above some city to the far west. And he'd sensed them haul these rocks from the depths of the earth to protect themselves from the falling sky.
It had worked well enough for the boy. Less so, sadly, for the woman.
He found them inside the sheltering cave, one dead, the other on his way. Sighing, Luctus closed the woman's sightless eyes, trying not to look at the basalt slicing through her side. She must have bled out fast with a wound like that.
The kid was still alive, thankfully. But barely. The boy's black laurel smoldered weakly, prometus hard at work elsewhere repairing the Eternal Radiance only knew what damage. It didn't look good. His face was bloody and bruised, more blood matting his black hair. One of his arms, badly burned, twisted at an unnatural angle from what looked like a bad fall. The most concerning however were the blue lips. The kid was freezing to death.
"You're not going to like this," Luctus murmured, reaching down and hefting the boy into his arms.
To his dismay, the kid didn't seem to mind bring lifted at all. Or even notice. The younger worldholder didn't stir at all, in fact, remaining out cold despite the jostling. Not good.
"Let's get you inside," Luctus murmured. "Warm you up a bit."
The ice cave wasn't the coziest place in the world, but it would have to do.
<>
"I came as quickly as I could," Princeps Oliva said, hurrying through the Onyx Palace's royal wing. Broken glass crunched under her feet and a cold breeze blew in through the window. "Tell me what happened."
"He was poisoned, Basilicus," Hedera, Princeps Daedalus's royal physician, said. "Someone slipped him quellwort and suppressed him magically for good measure. I tried to reverse it as soon as I realized, but..."
Oliva trembled as awareness swept over her. "But I commanded lifeholders not to use promenia to heal." Her voice sounded unreal to her own ears.
Hedera nodded, though her golden eyes were compassionate. "However Basilicus, I believe the Trellis would have fallen anyway. By the time I got to him, it had already started to collapse."
"Perhaps." Eternal Radiance, had she caused this inadvertently? "And now you need help removing the suppression."
"Yes, Basilicus."
Oliva nodded, walling away her fears. She had a duty to attend to. "I am under the Rex's compulsion as well, but he gave me special dispensation to treat the Princeps."
"Thank you, Basilicus."
She found her patient sobbing in his bed. "Oh, child," she sighed, her own tears welling. Her youngest great-great-grandchildren were his age. She could not imagine a boy so young having to cope with the knowledge of the destruction he'd caused. "It's not your fault."
The boy buried his face in his pillow, shoulders heaving. At his side, an older worldholder--his new aedificans--looked helpless. "He's not ready to listen, Basilicus," the man murmured, golden eyes haunted.
"Let me reverse the suppression," Oliva said, swallowing hard. "I can prescribe a sedative as well to help him calm."
"No!" the boy gasped. "I don't... I don't deserve that!" He clutched handfuls of his blankets. "I can't just sleep through what I did!"
"It's not your fault," she reassured him again, reaching out to pat his back. "You were poisoned--"
Gasping, he jerked away from her touch and screamed brokenly into his pillow.
Oliva swallowed and glanced at the boy's anguished aedificans. "When I reverse the suppression," she said lowly, "do not leave him alone. This kind of despair..."
"I won't," the man said.
"I will ask Princeps Buccina to see him," she added, summoning promenia and threading it into the boy. "She may be able to do more than I can."
She fell silent as she worked, purging the lingering traces of quellwort and chasing away the promenia blocking his body's prometus production.
"There," she murmured, watching as the newly synthesized particles released from his prometarium and began disbursing throughout his body. "I've--"
She broke off, frowning. What in the world?
The particles reversed direction, surging back through the channels along the opposite path and rapidly making their way to the boy's head, right arm, ribs, and bone marrow.
"What's wrong, Basilicus?" Hedera asked, her voice tense.
Oliva shook her head absently, examining the boy for injuries. But there were none whatsoever. He was perfectly healthy but for elevated stress hormones. Yet his body was behaving as though he'd been wounded.
She stilled. Or someone else had been wounded. She'd seen this before. Every lifeholder had. Eternal Radiance.
"Basilicus?"
"Nothing," she said, withdrawing her promenia and scattering it. She pasted on a soothing smile. "I have reversed his suppression. Please let me know if he has further trouble."
Hedera nodded. "Of course, Basilicus."
Oliva took her to leave as swiftly as propriety allowed. She needed to speak to the Rex at once.
She hoped she was wrong. She hoped Daedalus did not know. She hoped it had nothing to do with the cataclysm that had just befallen the world. But she feared all three were true.
The Princeps Worldholder had a twin.