The moment the light had turned a pale shade of blue and the air smelled of fresh blood and burning fire, Elred knew she had arrived. An entrance tapered sharply to the ceiling, the jagged cuts of stone featuring something like glass. She didn't need to be a whizz to guess what it was.
Ice.
Beyond the entrance, the sounds of battle rang. She summoned her magic and crept out of the tunnel. The ceiling was nonexistent, showering her with as much sunlight from the surface as possible. Synketros and Cardovia—have they truly pierced their way here?
Shadows darted in and out of her periphery. Be it weapons or people with wings, they paid Elred no mind, even as she picked her way between fallen debris and huge chunks of ice. She looked up, noticed the ledges where the ceiling could have been. It dawned on her. The Ice Capital wasn't a single pit. It's an entire upended tower, with multiple floors and levels—all crafted from ice. As a shard fairy who grew up in a glass-sculpted city, she developed respect for this supposed-to-be-extinct keiju race.
She had studied it with her tutors, how the sprites to the west had turned against their own kind during the recent war. Then, one day, the ice sprites had vanished and no one questioned it. Umazure was a magical land. Sometimes, when things wanted to be forgotten, they would be.
A flash of brown and black rushed towards her. She ducked just as a soldier sailed over her head and slammed against the cold walls. Oh. That would hurt. She tore her gaze from the fallen soldier—they were from Synketros or Cardovia anyway—and wrenched it back to who did the deed.
A tall, slender woman rushed through the battlefield, swinging her sword in effective motions. The blade was honed to a deadly edge, singing as it met blow after blow and traded one of its own. Enemies littered the woman's feet, groaning or clutching their fatal nicks and scratches. The woman's green eyes glinted with an alertness Elred had only seen in the soldiers who have been out in the field for too long. Her long blond hair had long fallen from its complicated braids. They have been here for a while.
Elred switched panes and studied the form of the battle. By the looks of it, the enemy side dropped from the sky, bearing their recent armaments and explosives. The scent of burning odian power clung to the air. She snorted. It was still as horrid as she remembered. While there were more sprites dressed in blue armor, the soldiers clad in black and brown were far more brutal. The ice sprites and some of their allies fought with magic and blades. Synketros and Cardovia fought with flintlocks and Dwarven metal.
It's no surprise to see which side was winning.
Among the huge booms of flintlocks and rifles firing, a manic laugh floated to the air. Elred turned to see a banshee with braided hair and fur-lined cloak and shoulders twirl around, fighting with quick slashes of thin but pointed daggers. She heard of rumors of a powerful banshee inside Cardovia's ranks, but she never expected her to be this insane.
The wind picked up, and Elred felt the magic laced around it. An air sprite. Unbelievable. They even managed to bring one down here? True enough, the thick flap of feathered wings soared over the battlefield, toting a fairy with it. Wavy blond locks, feathers as white as snow...
It's the High Queen. Or at least an incarnate of her. The Crown Princess, perhaps? A curse slipped out of Elred's lips. What was that sheltered brat doing here? She could only watch as the Crown Princess—April, was it?—lunge and tackle ice sprites to the ground and do her worst to them. The next High Queen was violent. Elred had to make sure she got on the good side.
Assuming she made it out here alive, of course.
She slunk deeper into the battlefield, ducking behind chunks of ice which stung her skin if she stayed pressed against them for longer than a second. Then, the earth shook. It's not the regular quakes in Helinfirth. This one was able to rattle even her insides. She looked down to find a beam of light through the near-opaque veil of ice. The air turned electric, magic raging past the trail dimension and overloading the ambiance. What's going on?
To her left, a mismatched group emerged from the lower floors. Alarm colored their faces. Had the cold drained the blood off their skin or was it something else? None of them noticed Elred as they tore off each other to run around the cavern's perimeter. She peeled away from her hiding place and attempted to intercept one of them. What had caused that earthquake? Why were they warning the ice sprites to head towards the exits? Weren't they going to defend their home?
The fighting continued, but the ice sprites were now focused on retreating. Why was that?
"Anahel, in here!" a female brownie called, her voice tearing a crease in Elred's attention. What's the Queen doing here? She turned to the source of the voice to find two brownies, a lanky nature fairy, and true enough, her mother rushing towards the way Elred had come. They're going back to the tunnels. To do what? Find Cyrdel and the others, maybe?
Something the Entobern clans said speared back to memory. The Queen had been preparing for a trip. This was that trip? It looked like Elred wasn't the only one with secrets to keep.
From Elred's right, a Synketrian soldier rushed past the retreating line of ice sprites, propping a rifle on her shoulders. It's aimed towards the Queen and her friends. The safety clicked. A finger hooked against the trigger. Elred whipped out from behind her hiding place and tackled the soldier just as the shot went off.
The bullet went wide, trailing the stench of odian with it. A jagged remnant of the ceiling of the floor above creaked before raining over the Helinfirthian queen. Elred climbed off the soldier but not without giving her a quick kick to the neck. The soldier crumpled without a fight.
Elred snatched the rifle and, remembering the meager training she'd had with the ones the Sovereign had stolen from the Heiress, checked the hatch. Two more shots. She propped the stock under an arm and aimed at two other soldiers who noticed her. She clicked the trigger. Two more enemies down.
She threw the empty armament away, letting it sail and smack against another incoming soldier, on her way to catch up to her mother. Answers. That's all she wanted to get. "Mother," she greeted, earning a quick look from the Queen.
The brownies, who seemed to have multiplied to two more, gave Elred one glance before bidding their goodbyes to her mother. The nature fairy, in his unmistakable green robes and light-colored hair which seemed familiar, slunk away without another word. "Why are you here?" Elred demanded as she followed her mother towards the tunnels' entrance.
"I can ask the same thing of you, Elred," the Queen answered, summoning a glass sword to her hands. With how brittle it looked, she concluded her mother's magic was somehow drained. And almost nothing could drain a Valkalin. Much more, the freaking Queen. "We must be away now. The Virtakios can't wait any longer."
"The Virtakios—?"
The earth shook again—more violently, this time—before the word even left Elred's mouth. She was thrown forward, almost crashing into her mother. Gentle hands steadied her, and she found the Queen's eyes. "Now's not the time to explain," she told Elred. "We must go."
"When will it be, then? When I'm banished and thrown into a lesium prison?" Elred hissed. It's hard to stay angry when the entire walls of the cavern groaned against the pressure of pure magic bleeding from the floor and threatened to fall in on them.
"Not the time!" the Queen snarled back, gripping Elred's arm and dragging her forward. "I promise to tell you everything if you hold your end of the bargain and tell me how you connect to all of this, and why Helinfirth had to fall under this madness."
Of course. Even in the face of adversity, her mother's still fit enough to cut deals. "Fine," Elred agreed, nevertheless. What choice did she have? Being stuck in the Synketrian prison made her behind some things. Like, oh, her mother having something to do with the Virtakios, for example.
The ground shook for the third time. Elred gritted her teeth and fought to keep her balance. Her mother's grip slipped from her arm, blending in the torrent of fairies streaming towards the tunnel's entrance. She was about to follow when light punched through the floor and flooded the entire cavern. Various cries of surprise and fear thickened in her ears. She found the wall and did her best to anchor herself in it.
The pressure heightened, turning her knees into jelly and her limbs into frail dough. Everyone still remaining in the cavern attempted to flee, whether to climb back up or beat the ice sprites and their allies to the tunnels. Both didn't end well. The banshee and the air sprite converged somewhere in the upper floors, talking amongst themselves.
Then, a lone figure shot through the expanse, bringing the light around them. Magic hummed in loud thralls, swallowing even the frantic cries of the damned. A voice as clear as the sky after a month of rain rang through the expanse. Tell the Heiress and the Sovereign the Virtakios is here.
Elred knew that voice. Heard it a thousand times in Cardina too. Tell them I will finish this once and for all.
She squinted against the glare of the magical light. At the eye of the storm was Xanthy, her arms raised to the heavens. The entire cavern answered the Virtakios's call, and it began crumbling down.
The walls groaned before breaking up into huge chunks of suspended rocks, Xanthy holding them in place. Elred wasn't one to believe in gods, but craning her head up to the dazzling figure holding up forces of nature at her behest, believing became easier. It's simple. Such power couldn't be from mere mortals.
Then, as if not being satisfied with Elred's adoration, the goddess let the earth rain down on them. Crintine's socks. Elred would never have such blind faith in any god after this.
A shock of white hair ripped through her periphery. She turned to find June zipping through the battlefield, his hands alight with magic. The way his eyes darted around meant he was looking for a way to reach Xanthy or at least stop the barrage of rocks. Elred was left to fend for her own, finding her way towards the entrance her mother disappeared into. Was this the reason why the Queen insisted on hurrying?
She didn't get her answer as she was thrown to the ground when the floor liquefied underneath her. What the—
She looked up. Big mistake.
What she saw didn't make sense. It's like the entire world had turned into one giant sludge of molten metal, pulsing and ready to be molded according to the desire of the smith. And in their case, the smith was the Virtakios's might, and all it wanted was to bury, and to bury forever.
It sounded familiar, certainly, but Elred didn't have the time to think about that.
Because the metal sludge slammed into her, drowning her world in black and gold.
She bolted upright with a gasp, expecting mud stuffed down her throat. Surprisingly, her breaths came easy. By instinct, she examined her surroundings. A tent of some sort. Makeshift, from the looks of hastily-braided lines and the center pole holding the roof up stuck to the earth in a diagonal. And was that...sunlight?
Indeed, it was. After spending a long time in varying shades of darkness, seeing the warm rays filtering through the thin canvas made her tear up. Just a little.
"There you are. I was beginning to think you didn't make it," a stern voice speared to her left. Elred turned to find her mother scooting towards her. Gone were the elaborate glamours, the extravagant gowns, and the sparkling jewels. Dressed in a plain, long-sleeved tunic and dark and dusty trousers, the Queen looked just like everybody else. "How are you feeling?"
Elred slapped the hand brushing her hair away from her face aside. "Where are we?" she demanded. "What happened down there?"
Anahel, as Elred resolved to start calling her mother from now on, pursed her lips. "We are still in Penleth...or at least the new version of it."
What did that mean? Couldn't her mother stop talking in riddles for once? "As for what happened," Anahel continued, scarlet eyes turned towards the flap of the tent as if she could sense something approaching. "We have awakened the Virtakios and she cleansed the land from great evil."
"I never took you for a believer of the mystics," Elred snorted, drawing her legs closer to her chest. The musty blanket over her legs followed her movements.
The Queen shrugged. "It's not the mystics if she walks among us," she said. "You owe me an explanation, Elred."
"And you, to me," Elred answered with narrowed eyes.
"Of course," Anahel looked away first and reached up. Her hand tapped Elred's knee. "We'll talk when you're up and about."
Elred opened her mouth to say something else, to breach the wall in front of the things they didn't want to talk about, but her will wavered. Instead, she bobbed her head, mum. "Yeah," she said. "Okay."
The Queen stood up and paced out of the tent, drawing the flap back up and letting some of the sunlight Elred craved in. Words were exchanged up front, leaving her to wonder what they're about. Then, the faint shadow of her mother turned smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a mere memory.
Cyrdel's sandy hair popped inside not too long after. "Someone handed me this note and told me to find you," he said. There's still that strange air hovering around him, like a trail that couldn't be erased, but it's not her place to pry. Instead, she extended her hand and the prince passed her a wrinkled parchment. "See you around."
"Yeah, you too," Elred threw as a passing comment behind the brownie's back on his way out of her tent. She turned the parchment over to find Argyll's familiar scrawl on the underside. Three words blinked back at her.
We will answer.
She sighed, letting her shoulders relax. Then, once she felt like the world wasn't spinning, she pulled her form out of the cot woven out of dried fronds and crept out of the tent. The Queen wasn't kidding when she said Penleth has a new version. Elred hasn't been to Penleth, but she had heard enough first-hand accounts of it. Boasting lush gardens, wide farm lands, and a lively trading capital, Penleth was a livelihood wonder. But now...
It seemed like the earth was turned upside down. Nothing green covered the expanse of dirt. Only two colors marred Elred's vision—the brown of the ground and the blue of the sky. Nothing else. The Virtakios truly knew how to instill in people a sense of wonder...and fear.
She spotted movement from the corner of her eyes. She saw Xanthy together with June, Nyxis, and Cyrdel. Beside them were the female brownie and the nature fairy. They laughed and cried, embraced and broke apart. It introduced in her an ache she couldn't expel. She didn't even know why.
But all of those emotions would be short-lived. They might have driven Synketros and Cardovia back in this battle, but they would be back. And when they did, it would be with the force of a million suns. There would be no mercy, no grace. It would be bloodshed.
It would be war.
And it would be coming sooner than they'd expect.