Like the snap of two fingers, the picture before them changes. The mountain shrinks in size, an opening the size of two carriages now visible in front of them. From their position, three people can be spotted at the edges of the entrance, another two can be spotted in the area where the grasses become trees, one of them dead.

“Something happened. I-it was like a burst of energy.” Trige shakes, as if this burst has sent cold air shooting over him. Two of the guards, including the injured one, rush towards the mountain’s entrance while the other two stand straighter, more alert, at their positions. They hold hold their spears in a defensive stance. Trige lets out a low groan, stumbling to his knees. His face perspires. “It burns.”

The empress drops her hands, her bow dissipating like dust. “Healer, fix him. Hunts, protect the healer. I’ll be back.” Then she just disappears. Hunts unsheathes both of his knives, his face going hard.

Trige’s eyes go wide, his brows furrowing from whatever onslaught of energy he’s feeling. How is Vahkul supposed to fix him when he’s unsure of what the exact problem is. It’s like everyone thinks him some sort of miracle maker. His abilities only extend so far. “What are you waiting for? Fix him.” Hunts grunts.

With a roll of his eyes, Vahkul approaches the crumbling smazer. “Where exactly are you hurting?” Another groan sounds, this one lower than the last. His fingers raise to point at his head.

“It starts here and travels down my neck. It’s like I’m melting.” Vahkul presses his hand to the man’s head, rays of light traveling from his skin to Trige’s. He feels the signals going off, but there is no damage for him to repair. Not only is this problem mental, the damage is ongoing.

He’s near the source of his pain, so there’s nothing Vahkul can do to heal him. It’s like being in agonizing pain because you’re on fire, but refusing to leave the house that’s been set ablaze. He can’t do anything until they move out of range of whatever power racks him. Vahkul shakes his head. “There’s nothing I can do until we leave. It would be like putting a bandage on him while a sword sticks out of his stomach.”

Hunts grits his teeth as his eyes surveil the area. Across from them the noise level begins to rise. Shouts in a language he can’t understand float harshly through the air. Vahkul ducks down when someone else exits the mountain. “What is she doing?” He asks anyone willing to answer.

“How are you so stupid?” This time it’s Trige that speaks. If Vahkul wasn’t so scared of retaliation, he would kick the man while he’s already down. He grunts again, his fingers going to massage the back of his neck. “What do you think we’ve been fighting for this whole time? Why do you think she sent troops here? For fun? For conquest?”

Vahkul thinks. “For power. I thought she sent them here to gain power.” Hunts shushes them, one of his hands making that funny symbol again. “Isn’t every move she makes for power?”

Some claim that the empress had always been power hungry. Others think the smaze made her that way. They think it ate away at her humanity. Vahkul isn’t sure what to believe, as he didn’t meet her until after the capital fell, and even then his time with her had been brief.

“Suppose that’s true, in a way. She really came here for answers. And she only knows of one person that can give them to her. She needs-”

“She’s coming,” Hunts raises, his knives situated in both of his hands again. “Get up, we need to be ready to run.” Vahkul helps Trige to his feet, allowing him to rest a hand on his shoulder for stability.

A few seconds pass before the empress pops up, visible once again. And in her arms, she holds a bloody, bruised, and beaten Tanitha. Vahkul’s breath speeds up, his hands aching to reach out to her. But the longer he stares, the longer he lets those tiny wisps of his power unfurl within him, the clearer things get.

Her chest isn’t rising.

Her arms flop around like uncontrollable weights.

Her neck is torn, the blood already beginning to dry.

“She’s… She’s dead.” They were too late. They killed her. His chest heats as his eyes flicker from her neck to her hands, to her forehead. Not only was she dead, but she was so thoroughly abused that Vahkul isn’t sure if the marks on her neck were the cause of her death.

Weren’t the amonos supposed to be her family? How could they do this to her?

Vahkul is startled by the sight of his empress’s smile. Her white teeth nearly blending in with her pale lips, and her expressionless eyebrows make it seem as if she’s bearing fangs rather than grinning. One of her hands, such a stark white compared to Tanitha’s skin, trails down the side of the dead woman’s face.

There’s something nurturing about the look that takes over her expression. “What was already dead, cannot die Healer.” She runs her fingers over the shredded skin barely keeping Tanitha’s head on her body, and Vahkul can do nothing but shudder, an ominous feeling washing over him.

He had been ordered to repair the flesh on her neck. Shame and disgust overcame him as he was forced to lay his hands upon her skin. She had already gone cold by the time they made it to a safe area to camp.

While the empress was gazing off into the night, Vahkul righted some of the other problems she had. It didn’t seem right to alter her at all, but if he was going to close one wound, he might as well do them all.

After he was finished with her, he got rid of Trige’s headache, which had dulled to a small pounding the further away from the settlement they got.

As if forest creatures knew an apex predator was near, not a single insect or small animal came out to interrupt the group. Silence overcame them.

Vahkul sat, wondering not for the first time if his empress was truly sane. She traveled across the ocean, manipulated a lowly healer, and stationed troops all along the coast of an unexplored continent just to kill a single person. And once that was done, she insisted on dragging the corpse around.

She can’t be sane.

No sane person would do this.

The empress chuckles, her head turning to face Vahkul. “You think I’m insane.” Her smile is feral. It reminds him eerily of Tanitha’s. “But I am the sanest person on this continent. And we are the only ones that know the truth.”

Vahkul pulls his legs out from under himself, not wanting to give his input. She hasn’t asked for it, and he’s not sure he would have anything gentle nor respectful to say anyway. His eyes trail over to Tanitha.

Her normally dark brown skin has taken on a nasty gray tinge. She’ll start decomposing soon. He swallows. There’s something ironic about this. When he first met her, she spewed prophecy about his death, but in the end, she’s the one that fell. And here he sits, an ache in his chest and a ball in his throat.

Her sense of self preservation was always sharp. How could she have let herself be killed? The empress rubs at her head, her black eyes glossing over. She grumbles, seemingly to herself, her fingers curling into her hair. “Everyone thinks I’m the villain. The evil empress out to destroy the world. You think me despicable, don’t you Healer.”

This time, her smile is sharp.

Vahkul is quick to shake his head, confused as to why she’s targeting him. While he doesn’t think her evil, he does believe that she needs help. The smaze does more than just give survivors powers. It magnifies portions of people’s personalities. It amplifies all of the nasty things about a person. Vahkul is lucky he caught it when he was a child.

For it he had been older, more developed, there’s no telling what kind of person he would be today. The empress was said to be a ruthlessly cunning girl in her more youthful days. What many people fail to see is that cunning is just one of the many forms of self-preservation.

If she had to be so ruthless in her childhood that she gained the ability to out-think and out-manipulate those older and considerably more experienced than herself, it had to have stemmed from some kind of childhood trauma. And now she’s a grown woman with both literal and marshal power. Perhaps she was a narcissist in her youth, and that is why her personality has manifested in this way.

She smacks her lips, her hands planted behind her as she leans onto them. “How about a story then? One to pass the time.” Though the sky has darkened, the half full moon still offers a little light. The empress raises her hands, pulling them apart as if some elastic is forcing tension.

Darkness bubbles in the empty space. It contorts and stretches, bending and warping until at last, a small picture is formed. A woman and a man. No, a princess and a king. “There once was an emperor that wore a broken crown. He was an explorer at heart. He never wanted to be tied to the throne, but the brutal death of his eldest brother forced his fate.” Her black eyes twinkle as the shadow king swings the princess around.

“He was forced to marry and was rushed to produce an heir. The former empress had trouble with this, you see. And though their marriage had been one of convenience, he had come to love that woman even more than he was supposed to love his empire. So when she died giving birth to his only child, when his heart was torn in two, he decided that he would no longer live for his nation, but for himself.”

The king’s blackened crown falls off, dissolving into the air. “His love for his empress transfered over to his daughter. But it was no usual love.” She smiles without teeth, small wisps of her white hair fluttering around her face. “He grew attached to her. Everywhere he went, you could find the little tot not far behind. It was no surprise that when he decided he was to begin exploring again, he took his princess with him.”

A ship, grand and ornate forms, the twirling pair dancing within its deck. “With every day that passed, something began to twist in his gut. A fear crept up on him. He knew he would eventually lose his princess as well. So he sailed. He employed scholars and druids of all religions to help him find what he was looking for. He wanted the flower of death. He wanted her to have freedom from the unknown. He wanted her to never leave him.

“It wasn’t long until he heard of the Land of Creatures, the place where magic ran rampant and the strong could elude death. The emperor knew he would find truths there.” Her hand cuts through the boat, and from the torn shadows another picture begins to form.

The picture of a man, emotion so clear on his gaseous face that Vahkul can barely stand to look at the agony. “He sailed to these unknown lands, intent on finding a means of living forever. Maybe it was naivety that led him to sell his realm, or maybe it was desperation. The why doesn’t matter as much as the what. The mad emperor didn’t understand the trade in full, but he was running out of time.

“Soon his princess would grow old enough to realize that the nature of their relationship was odd at best.” Her eyes gaze off, and if Vahkul had any doubts about the story before, he knew now that she spoke of the late Emperor Machil. He was said to have been driven mad. By what, the druid can’t remember. “In the land of creatures a small community of forest people protected a well that was said to be blessed by one of their gods. I believe his name was Illuitus.”

Vahkul sits straighter. Her shadows twist until they represent a small group of people. “I’m not sure what the emperor offered them in return, but the eldest of this small community agreed to let him take a single cup of water, only to be offered to his most precious child. But you know what they say about the Velish… We are a greedy lot.”

He thinks he knows where this is going. The empress nods. “Yes. When the sky darkened and the moon refused to shine, the emperor stole off into the night, his daughter in one hand and a bucket of enchanted waters in the other.” She laughs, the sharp sound cutting through the thickened air.

“Leave it to one man’s greed to destroy an entire nation.” Vahkul turns. Tanitha wipes at her nose, her lips smacking together as if she ate something tough. “Ugh, I have the worst dry mouth I’ve ever had in my life. And I’ve eaten bark off of a tree before, just to give you all some context.” The druid’s mouth falls open. “What? It was a rough month.”

Her hand travels around her face, feeling for anything out of the ordinary. Her brows scrunch up as she takes in the dried blood coating her fingers and stuck under her nails. “You’re awake.” The empress dips her head, her shadows dissipating. “How was your chat?”

Vahkul, still reeling from the fact that Tanitha is actually speaking right now, is as still as a mountain. “Elwin.” Tanitha’s lips pucker, her features sharpening as she looks to the ethereal empress sitting on the ground before her. “He told me you would be here when I woke up.” Her head tilts. “I had hoped it was a lie.”

The druid’s head shakes as his eyes fly from one woman to the other. How do they know each other? He looks to the empress’s two hounds and finds that they have stood and turned their backs to the group as if to signify some kind of privacy. “Wa-”

He’s cut off. “You look so much like your father that it actually angers me.” The empress stands and Tanitha follows suit. They walk, circling each other like hawks.

“You know what they say about amonos, they dominate everything, including the gene pool.” Vahkul watches as the nails on her fingers extend. He hears her jaw begin to creak. His eyes slam shut. He knows that sound. She made it right before she bit his hand off. His wrist tingles at the memory.

Vahkul also stands, his eyes darting back and forth. Should he try to intervene? He could barely even raise himself up, the shock of seeing Tanitha moving as if nothing had happened to him made his bones heavy. Should he say something? Interrupting the empress could lead to repercussions far worse that having his hand bitten off.

Again, he swallows, his body tensing.

Then he remembers who he is, what he is. He turns, his back facing the pair, his body stiff. His memories had been returned to him, so he has no excuses. He is a solider.

Nothing more.

He must not forget himself again.