Gareth carefully wrapped the silk fabric around Orenda’s still form as she tried to control her breathing. The sari had sat in the box for so long, and been bought so long ago, when Orenda was so much smaller, that she was terrified there wouldn’t be enough to go around her, enough of it to wear in the style that she was supposed to. It had been important to Ellie that Rendy should have it, and Ellie wouldn’t be at her coronation, but she had been right. It was important.

It would be Toli, as Xandra’s closest living relative, who would put the crown on her head during the coronation at the Sacred Earth temple in the capital of what was once the Urillain empire. As Gareth made intricate loops of the long fabric, Orenda tried not to think about how her heart should be beating faster with her excitement. She tried not to think about how it wasn’t beating at all.

He was also the one who painted her face in the style of the late high priestess of the Fire Temple on the Sacred Mountains, and told her how she looked almost exactly like her grandmother. Orenda felt the smooth softness of the Sari against her body, and thought of how proud Ellie had been when she had bought it. Ellie had known Gareth then, hadn’t she? That was the only explanation that made sense.

Orenda stared into the mirror and wondered if she really did look like her grandmother.

Orenda walked through her new home and watched the construction workers trying their best to put everything in order. Mary Sue walked beside her, looking through the notes she had on the status of the nobility who were, perhaps understandably, not happy about the few decrees Orenda had had time to make.

Orenda had never cared for titles in the slightest, and many people found that they were now meaningless. That suited Tolith fine, and she remembered that as she had hugged him goodbye he had kissed her cheek and told her that if anyone ever called him “Lord Glenlen” again he would likely shoot them where they stood. He seemed to believe that he had dodged a bullet. He couldn’t be a viscount; he would rather die than be Prince Regent of the Urillian Empire. He was married to the sea.

Orenda was more practical than Xandra had been. She didn’t care about long standing estates or how blue one’s blood was- she needed money to rebuild, and to help integrate the humans who found themselves in a strange position. Most of them had not been in the Knights of Order, and as a result, most were uneducated, and unsure what to do now that their place in society had changed. None of the nobility were keen to let go of their entire staff-

Orenda was, however, amazed at how easily she ‘put the fear of god’ in them.

Change was coming, whether anyone wanted it or not.

But it was not exactly what she wanted. Life, it seemed, almost never was. She had expected that she would become queen, and then her subjects would obey her instantly. That was not the case in the slightest. She had told herself that she would never have to kill again, after she took the throne, but that hope went right out the window the first night she awoke to try to find out why she was on fire, and found that the armor had sprang up to protect her from the blade of an assassin. She didn’t know how many of those would have to die before they stopped coming altogether.

But Orenda hadn’t had to worry about protection, because Klin seemed keen to take care of those little problems for her. She had to tell him that they needed information more than they needed corpses, and the idea that she didn’t need him at all never seemed to sink in. Every time she told him this, he told her that he a knight sworn to protect the crown, and that these problems would just keep happening.

Klin was right. It was a near daily problem. But Orenda was not Xandra. She did not hide behind walls and lapdogs. She got answers, and then she created solutions.

It was easier, and, she believed, more humane, to end problems at their source, rather than allowing a string of murders. She believed that within a few years time there would be no one left who had once been related or loyal to Xandra, because they would no longer be alive. It was one thing to try to hurt her- but Orenda had friends who were not immortal.

It was lucky, Orenda eventually decided, that Klin was so dependent upon his position. She knew that she could never really let him out of her sight. He couldn’t be killed, so the best possible thing to do with him was to treat him the way she treated the sacred staff or the water stone. He was a weapon that needed to be guarded, that could be dangerous if she lost sight of it for a second.

She still grew hungry, grew thirsty, grew tired, but Klin said those things weren’t real. He said he never really had to eat, drink, or sleep, that they had merely gotten into the habit, but Orenda didn’t believe him. No one who woke up screaming, who thrashed and fought in his dreams, would ever sleep if they didn’t need to. If Klin did not need to sleep he would not, she reasoned, because watching him try was terrifying.

There were many things to be done, to make Uril a place worth living in again, but as Orenda placed a hand over the place her heart once was, listening to Mary Sue as she read over the tax code she had worked out, Orenda realized that she had all the time in the world.

Orenda stood, staring at her private bath in the palace. It was already full, and her head was clear as she sat on the edge and put in one foot, then another, then slid into the first body of water she had ever immersed herself in. She sank in up to her shoulders, and thought of how powerful the stone that had replaced her heart was.

“Rendy!” One of the lamps dotting the walls called out, and she jerked back to look at it, saw Ali’s face, and extended her hand to call up a giant flame.

He looked happier than she could ever remember seeing him, and he cast so strongly she could make out most of the room he was in. He was walking around what seemed to be a bedroom, and as he knelt on a bed, Orenda saw Bubbider, who looked as if she had just been through a battle.

“Rendy!” Bubbider said, “I want to introduce you to someone.”

She pulled apart the blanket she had in her arms to reveal a human child so tiny Orenda could barely believe it was a real living, breathing, thinking thing.

“This is my son,” Bubbider said, “His royal highness, Prince Aban Ali AlHadeen.”

“Why would you do that to a child?” Orenda laughed, “Why would you name him that?”

“Because his father is a hero,” Bubby said simply, “I think you’re only angry because you’re single.”

“He’s beautiful, Bubby,” Orenda said.

“I know,” Bubbider looked down at the baby in her arms, then, with shock she asked, “Wait, are you in the bath?”

“Yes,” Orenda shrugged, “But in terms of strength I think you’ve still beaten me. I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘those twelve hours of labor were the most fun I ever had in my life’.”

Klin sipped his wine and stood behind Orenda and a little to the left, as he had taken to doing, while she looked out over the buffet before her, and the people who sat at the table. The Knights of Order filled the grand dining hall, and Orenda raised her glass in time with Mary Sue’s toast.

“You know, Rendy,” Anilla said, “I can’t stay here forever. I’m really happy for you, but I need to go find my dragon.”

“Does it, um… does it have to be a dragon?” Klin asked.

“You asked me that once before,” Anilla said.

“Yeah it’s just, you said soulmates have the same magic signature,” Klin said, “And it’s like… you look just like my buddy Morgan.”

Orenda focused her eyes and saw that Anilla’s soul moved exactly like the demon Morgani Magnus.

Junior Briggadon stared up at the sign that his brothers had finished building the day before, and walked over to the table where the blueprints for the new building had been laid out. He was particularly interested in the tower- he suspected that there was an invisible field of electricity that existed in the air, and thought that he could potentially harness its energy now that he was finally free to spend the money his family had spent a lifetime amassing.

This place was not just going to be a place of learning for the students, but a shining beacon of research for all of Xren.

The sign above the archway read: Briggadon Memorial Academy - Follow the Path of Order. Follow the White Rabbit.

Orenda stood with Klin, in the area behind the temple, while he stood staring at a stone in the ground and holding his sword in both hands.

Master, please! The sword begged. Please, you can’t do this! I’ve been nothing but kind to you! I’ve done all you asked of me! Please, please, I’m trapped! You’re the only friend I have known for centuries! You can’t do this!

“I’m sorry,” Klin said, “But we are… we are really bad for each other.”

He took the hilt in both hands and slammed the sword into the stone.

Orenda had drawn up plans for a statue, heavy and tall, over the sword, incorporating it into the design. The statue would show the Emerald Knight in repose, with his stone hands over the sword, so that no one would ever be able to pull it out again. She was having a plaque inset into the stone itself, a dedication of sorts. She didn’t want the symbol to remain one of fear, a thing to be defeated. The story was too important. It needed to become a legend, something that could not have possibly been true.

The inscription would read only, “A faithful servant”.

Sarya sat in the courtyard of the castle, thinking of how there had once, on that fateful day, been snow. But now the flowers were in bloom, and she slid her bow across her strings and began to sing.

“Orenda, the Reign Ender

She’s a fire, grew from an ember

If you meet her, you will remember

The terms of your surrender.”

She stopped and wrote something down on the parchment she had open.

“You say I look like Morgani Magnus?” Anilla asked Klin as he stood in the greenhouse, transplanting seedlings from their eggshell containers into pots.

“Yeah,” Klin said, turned to look at her, shrugged, and said again, “I mean… yeah.”

“But he isn’t a dragon,” Anilla said.

“Yeah,” Klin said, “I know, I’m just saying.”

“Can you introduce me to him?” Anilla asked, “You said you were friends.”

“I mean… I don’t… really have friends, but he’s… always been kinder to me than I deserve, I think. He tried to give me good advice, but I didn’t follow it. I um… yeah. I know how to summon him. But I’d… I’d have to go back to the Frozen North.”

“That’s where I’m from anyway!” Anilla said.

“I can’t go,” Klin said, “I’m sworn to protect the crown. And I have… I have a lot to… to do. A lot to make up for, I think. I just… I have a lot to…”

“I understand,” Anilla said.

Orenda sat in the library she had built, pouring over the old books that had been in Xandra’s private vault.

She had no idea where Xandra had gotten these- but she would bet money that Klin did.

The books that had once belonged to the Kabaal held many secrets, handed down from an original group of nine humans who had once defied a god to save a desperate man on the run, who had escaped from a prison. Their names were listed, and it was claimed that each family begat the entire race of shifters. Two held her attention more than the others: Ahnah Amarok, who the books said was the most fiercesome protector of all humanity, the woman who tamed the dire wolves that roamed the world during the ice age, who was more loyal to those who could prove their worth than anyone on the planet. Her strength and rage were matched only by her love and compassion. And Quizlivan Briggadon, rumored to be so fast and agile he could outrun gods. His intelligence seemed to be matched only by his overwhelming love, romantic, familial, and platonic that was recorded, over and over by his many apparent lovers and children, which led Orenda to believe that wererabbits may be more common than she had originally believed.

According to the Kabaal, they did not only hide Magnus- they helped him destroy a god.

When the elves broke free of their prison in the Crystal City, they were under constant threat of attack, an attack so dire that it wiped out most of the life on the planet when the first moon fell. To prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again, the Kabaal helped Magnus build a weapon capable of housing the soul of a god.

But a god was too powerful to contain.

So the soul was split into quarters.

Thesis had not intended to hurt the world- he had intended to destroy it.

In order to prevent this he was sealed away within the weapon- four stones containing pieces of a soul, which were given to four dragons, who were then sealed away with powerful, ancient magic in four temples at the four corners of the planet: The Air Temple, in the Sacred Sky, far above the air continent in the Frozen North, the Fire Temple, fueled by the heart of the planet in the fire continent, the Water Temple, deep underwater in the deepest part of the Sacred Ocean on the water continent, and the Earth Temple, within the Sacred Woods of the Earth Continent.

The four places were sealed with an ancient magic that could only be accessed by a high elf, and Magnus and his followers were the only High Elves to escape the curse. Thesis could never be reunited. His attack had been prevented, and Xren had, despite everything, been saved.

Xandra’s notes told a different story. She spoke of an ancient curse that had sealed away a god who was trying to save Xren, who had left breadcrumbs for his most devout followers. If Thesis could ever be released, if anyone could prove their devotion, the curse that had split the elves would be broken. They would reunite, as they had before the fall, before Magnus’s betrayal, and would be allowed back into the paradise that Thesis had created for them.

Xandra had been trying to save the world, had been a devoted follower of Thesis- and she had managed to collect three of the four pieces. Even the Kabaal admitted that the paradise of prehistory existed- though they saw it as a gilded cage. The High Elves had had no war, no famine, no disease, no death. They had lived a life of peace and plenty, with technology beyond the comprehension of any being still living on Xren.

Orenda did not know who to believe.