˙Λ uɐɔS ˙ᴉɔo˥ ɟo poɥʇǝW

Asibridel blinked. Walter raised his hand at the dungeon heart and incanted mind-controlling magic upon it. How, or why, it worked, the long-lived elf could not imagine, yet he concentrated and plumbed its significant depths.

"Why are you gawking?" Walter asked without opening his eyes. "You're not still going to refuse this place, are you? Go do what I told you to do."

"Yes," Prime Minister Asibridel tore her eyes away from the statue of Alune, revealed to be Hera, combined with an artifact of demons.

At the doorway, Walter told her, "When Nix arrives, tell her to come downstairs."

"Pope Althonbright is dead, choked to death on a chicken bone. The Black Mage of Eovamund demands your presence at the theocracy."

"There's no way that's true," Nix said, "Who are you?"

The disheveled woman snuck up on Nix, a rarity, and the woman acted with a flippancy that she detested. She could appreciate internal freedom, and she lived for it, but this woman felt too free, inhumanly so.

"I'm just the Black Mage of Eovamund's humble messenger. If you believe it or not, that's up to you. He gives you three days."

The woman ran off faster than an elf could keep up.

Hesitation squirmed inside of Nix's stomach. She dreamed, every day, for the chance to be a mother. If Walter called on her, then he likely discovered the treatment. Not only could she bear Prince Wilhelm's child, the first half-elf in Eovamund not summoned as a hero, but there were fifty-fifty odds it would be a boy. Nix's feet felt as heavy as lead, and her blood frosted. The entire reason she languished at his currently empty property was to nag him when he returned. Instead? Walter demanded her presence under a time limit. Her heart accelerated.

Still, the Alune Theocracy was an enemy of the Wilmand Kingdom, and they identified her as Prince Wilhelm's mistress. It seemed reasonable they faked the message to lure her out, kidnap, and ransom her, provided they didn't just enslave her. The capital, and her lover, was two days travel in the wrong direction if she ran non-stop.

"I need information," Nix said after she rolled through Princess Roselynde's bedroom window. The guards assigned to her by Prince Peterby, the Royal Spellswords, readied to kill her, stalled only by the princess's raised hand. "What news is there of the theocracy?"

Messenger pigeon detailed its fall, or, better explained, Pope Althonbright died, the cause of death some unfortunate accident, and Walter currently occupied the tiny nation. That's all Nix needed to hear. She begged Princess Roselynde to send word to Prince Wilhelm to explain her absence.

For three days, Nix ran non-stop. Horses and wagons lacked the speed. Her legs burned, and her stomach twisted from exertion. Still, she pushed on. Feet blistered. Something deep inside her, like whispered pillow-talk, spoke of fate and destiny and prophecy. This hope was why she decided to be a wayfarer elf, and why she learned so much about the other nations, and she trained her physical abilities to the limit. She decided it must be. She demanded it had to be. Please be! If it was a trap, so be it. She'd gamble her freedom, her identity on the chance.

The Alune Theocracy, despite its wealth and power, looked desolate. People moved between the shops, without small talk, and performed their work. Each one turned and looked at her before they noticed her elvish ears and ducked their heads. None would dare look her in the eye. It must be true: Walter took over the theocracy. Why? There was no meaning to it.

A masked elf greeted her at the mansion, "My name is Shyla. The Black Mage of Eovamund awaits. Follow me."

Giddiness replaced exhaustion.

Walter slumped on a chair in the demon dungeon, depleted. His eyes, the only body part that moved except for a shallow breath, rotated to look at her.

"Walter?"

Without lifting his forearm off the armrest, he raised a single finger to point at a silver goblet surrounded by rubble. A figure, the elf goddess Hera, joined hands with Aratron, her demon husband, on the surface of the cup. Between their shoulders was a pair of scales. "The dual-nature thing was a hint from the gods, I think."

"You're not making any sense," Nix whispered. She looked into the cup and the swirling blue drink it contained. "Why am I here? I thought this was about my fertility. If I must, I will allow a demon inside, so long as I can bear fruit."

Walter's fingers curled over the armrests, and he leveraged himself from the chair. It creaked, or perhaps he did, and Walter teetered. He seemed so small.

He motioned for her to sit. She did so. With both hands, he brought the silver goblet to her, and it hovered close to her lips. Nix was sure the smell was an illusion of some sort because she detected several aromas. Fruit from the few apple trees in the northern peninsula, the cologne of her father, which she thought she'd forgotten, and the lips of the young boy she kissed as a child. The last memory she forced herself to relive every single day to preserve it.

"You're confused. Deeply. This will not infest you with a demon. It will remove one, but this boon comes with a price."

"I don't understand, but I don't care. I will risk it. Name your terms: I'll accept anything." She helped Walter hoist the cup forward.

"They're not my terms, but I do need your help. Until I recover, I need a bodyguard. I need to hide from the woman I sent to you and from the Rose of the Rapier until I can be sure of her intentions. When the time comes, you will be released, and you can return to Prince Wilhelm to raise your boy. For the rest of your life, you will safe-keep this relic, Hera's Grail."

"You know it'll be a boy, for sure?"

Walter released a sad and singular chuckle. "Just a hunch, blonde, tall, and pointy-eared. He'll be honest like his father and willful like his mother."

Her cheeks shuddered when tears wet them. When she could speak, Nix croaked out, "How do you know?"

"I don't, I'm only sure. I know the same way I can make an oracle unknowing. You either place your faith in my magic, or you turn away. It's your choice."

"Please, help me."

Walter guided Nix's head back with one hand and tilted the goblet. The drink tasted like air, but she could feel the smooth texture, pure volume with no taste. As she sipped and then gulped, Walter recited a spell. In the tiny little one-room dungeon, his mana-infused voice echoed.

"Memorize this incantation," he instructed.

˙ǝʇɐɟ uʍo ɹnoʎ ʍolloɟ puɐ 'ǝʌᴉl 'ʍou 'ǝuopun ǝɹɐ sǝlɐɔs ǝɥ┴ ˙ɐᴉɐפ ɟo ǝsɹnƆ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝǝɹɟ ʍou ǝɹɐ noʎ ;soɹoqoɹnO ɟo ǝsɹnƆ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝǝɹɟ ʍou ǝɹɐ no⅄ ˙ǝɯoɥ suɹnʇǝɹ uoɯǝp ǝɥ┴ ˙lnos ɹnoʎ oʇ lᴉɐɹפ s,ɐɹǝH ɯoɹɟ 'ǝɹnʇnɟ ɹnoʎ oʇ ǝɹnʇnɟ ʎɯ ɯoɹɟ 'ɐuɐɯ ɹnoʎ oʇ ɐuɐɯ ʎɯ ɯoɹℲ

Then, she choked. Memories flooded Nix like ice water diverted from a river. She shivered and screamed. Centuries flashed; millennia trod by. How many of her own names did she forget? Dozens. Black smoke poured from her eyes and mouth, into the goblet, and disappeared. The more the grail extracted, the more she remembered. She recalled Asibridel's birth. How far back did she go? The events stretched. She founded the Sanctuary when the heroes stripped the elves of hope, humiliated by their mistreatment during the Third Crusade. Was it worth this weight? Her pride as a member of her race reasserted itself when the era of Idrun and Minvra, the Golden Period, fragmented now, passed. She protected Eovamund under the paladin's banner, all the elves did, during the Second Crusade, the Dragon Crusade. Now, dimly, as if through smoke, the beginning of her life, the First Crusade, she met the First Four Heroes.

The underlying pit that her memories fell into closed. The thing devouring her history, reincarnating her through ignorance, receded. Remembrances returned, her rightful property, and they flattened her thoughts like a blacksmith's hammer. She flopped on the ground, and blood trickled from her nose. When the pain passed, she found Walter smoothing out her hair.

"I remember Viktordromos. He was so wise, and I'm so old. I can't believe I forgot what he taught me." Nix's lip trembled. "Wilhelm will probably name the boy Arthur. He really liked that story you told him. You've told me about the child for a reason. I don't get to see my son? Do I?"

"That's the price: you die."