“Your Highness!” The Warden’s voice was tense, almost impatient, but the woman still bowed low, as was customary, when her Ruling stepped through the entrance of the Command centre. “Over here.”

Wotar only nodded at her and continued walking as energetically as when she had gotten off her glider a few minutes ago. She hadn’t dared look around once they landed for she feared the smoke which was still raising above her home city, her favourite city, would pin her where she stood and make her forget what she came here for.

The Command centre sat atop the hill that loomed over the Warden’s barracks. The naming was legacy – no one truly used it to coordinate troops – it sat there, deserted and gathering dust for decarotations – since the last Great war. It was still called a Command centre more out of convenience and because no one had bothered to repurpose it. The few remaining functional terminals inside it were currently used to store backup copies of the Warden’s daily reports. Other than that, the underground bunker from which the Generals, serving under the previous Ruling had given out the final command which had decided AWA’s victory, was right now little more than a dusty electronic archive which even the druids and maintenance engineers avoided, if they could.

And now, entering the twilight of its entrance, inhaling the dust-filled, stuffy air and trying to ignore the buzzing of old computers around, Wotar understood why. There was just enough lighting inside for one to not keep stumbling into objects, but it was muted enough to remind its visitors of exactly how much it resembled a tomb. And from what the Ruling had heard on the way, today the resemblance had turned to reality.

The Warden who had greeted her at the entrance was walking forward with the confidence of a woman who had been here more times than she’d have liked. Wotar wondered a moment how much time it had taken the Wardens to find the dead body in the Central Computer Hub and exactly how many women and how many times had walked the path the young lieutenant was leading her on through the dust. A part of her, which she had been trying to repress since she’d landed, was still blaming her for leaving in the first place.

Wasn’t she the Ruling over sea – the Lady of AWA? Was it not her duty to, above all else command the troops and care for the safety of all inhabitants of the Twin-Continents? But more than anywhere else it was here in her very own capitol of Syfis that she was needed, required, duty and honour bound to protect, single-handedly, if needed, every citizen and her family from enemy onslaught. And yet it was when her subjects and city needed her most that she had went off to Goddess knows where with a criminal and a failed experiment, in search of a foreign land’s royal offspring.

“We found her here, Your Highness”, the lieutenant’s voice shook her out of her thoughts.

“Thank you, lieutenant Kreek”, she replied mechanically as her eyes took stock of the dusty room they had just entered.

They found themselves in the very heart of the old Command centre, where, ironically, there was even less light. There were all in all two working lamps, one of which was blinking periodically – often enough to irritate, but apparently not enough for someone to go through the trouble of changing the incandescent tube. From the monitors, arranged in a semi-circle, only one seemed to show signs of working. On its screen, a dimensigram recorder app was still open. Her eyes drifted downwards, past the keyboard and suddenly glued themselves to the lifeless body, strewn on the floor in front of the terminal.

“You haven’t moved her yet?” She felt her voice rise in a menacing tone, to overcome the pulsing of blood suddenly rushing to her ears.

“We only found her yesterday, Your Highness”, the Warden started excusing herself and gulped loudly.

“So she was here all night long?” Wotar made an effort to restore the calm in her voice. “You haven’t contacted her family? You haven’t made preparations for a funeral?”

“W-we weren’t sure what to do, Your Highness”, the lieutenant stammered. “Because Lieutenant Aeris… Well, she…”

“Lieutenant Aeris Tan?” Wotar demanded in disbelief.

The Warden confirmed and continued her explanation, but the sound of blood thumping in her ears had returned, this time stronger than before. The Ruling made another step towards the body on the dusty floor and looked it over carefully. Indeed, the woman, lying dead at her feet was the very same one she had demoted so dramatically a few weeks ago, without batting an eye. But her name rang familiar to her from someplace else. If only she could remember where she’d come across it before…

“… had recorded some dimensigram, which we wanted you to take a look at.” Her ears tuned back into reality, just in time to hear the last words of the Warden, who was still nervously, yet respectfully standing at attention a few feet away from her ruler.

“Most likely a message for her family?” Wotar replied absent-mindedly, still gazing intently at the cadaver on the floor.

“That’s what we thought at first too”, the woman continued, visibly relieved that she was no longer on the receiving end of the Ruling’s icy glare. “And the first few minutes actually are, but after that… Well, I think it’s best if I played it for you, if you will allow it.”

Wotar nodded slightly and her eyes moved to the sole working projector in the center. The Warden carefully skipped over the body of her deceased colleague and reached for the button next to the screen to play the final recording. The projector came on with an unpleasant clicking sound and the image it projected shook a few times, before coming into focus. The holographic platform displayed the shaky silhouette of the woman at their feet, Aeris Tan, who appeared hunched over slightly, either because she was looming over the terminal, or in order to keep pressure on the nasty wound on her stomach.

“My lovely Phun!” The dimensigram uttered, slightly out of breath. “Pride of mine! I know that I seldom speak this way to you, for our tradition and lot in life are different – we aren’t men to allow ourselves such emotional outbursts, but if I don’t say this to you now, I may never get the chance. I believe in you, my child, my wonderful, only daughter! You will accomplish great things, even though it may seem as though the Goddess has forsaken you.”

“Wait a second”, Wotar waved her hand and the Warden paused the recording. “Did you check who her daughter is?”

“Yes, Your Highness”, the lieutenant nodded. “And here’s where it gets interesting, if you don’t mind me saying so… Because Aeris Phun isn’t on the Giftless Register.”

“And yet her mother is…” Wotar responded with an icy edge to her tone, finally remembering where she’d encountered the name before.

“Affirmative, Your Highness – Aeris Tan, lost her Gift when hitting menopause. Such cases are of course, quite rare…” The Warden’s voice trailed off into the distance as she was reading off of her mobile terminal, as if she wanted to say something, but then thought against it.

“They’re quite rare, because they never happen.” The Ruling cut into the silence. “Either you’re born with the Gift or without it. I’m willing to bet on the fact that Aeris Tan is the only such case on record. “The slight dilation in the Warden’s pupils were the only response she needed. “Let’s hear it then – the reason why our colleague Aeris had decided to sacrifice herself to protect her daughter’s honour.”

“I still remember your seventh birthday”, the recording continued, after a slight hitch. “When I showed you for the first time what you would one day be able to do yourself. I had no idea back then what was happening to you – why you spoke so late, why your brothers could tell where the Wind was coming from before you, despite being several years your juniors. I knew, of course, as every mother does, that there was something wrong, something quite out of place, but I was trying desperately to convince myself and your poor father that everything was alright.” The dimensigram shuddered again and the face of the woman contorted in an unpleasant, painful grimace. “I don’t want you to see me like this. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t go to the shamans. They have their work cut out for them as it is, they need to help citizens who need them way more than me – the crazy woman who decided to save a city all on her own. But I did it for you, Phun. Because I still remember how I gathered you in my arms that day, on your seventh birthday and took us to the roof in a single jump. I still remember the look in your dark eyes – full of awe, as if I had performed a miracle. I did this today, because I lied to you then. I told you that you would soon be able to do that and so much more, despite knowing in my heart of hearts that perhaps you couldn’t. Yet I still believed in you, I hoped with all the might my soul could muster, my dear girl, that you will accomplish great deeds. And I wasn’t going to let your condition stand in the way of that. So I promised myself that my Gift would be yours. I would let all of Aliah believe that Aeris Tan, one of the most powerful super ara level windstorms of the Northern Twin had lost her powers, before I’d let anyone say that my daughter is incapable. Giftless…”

Wotar felt a sudden realisation stab her chest and her temples at once and waved abruptly at the lieutenant to stop the recording. Aeris Tan. No, the name wasn’t only familiar to her from the Giftless Register. On the contrary…

“Lieutenant, give me your tablet.”

The young Warden made a couple of steps toward her and stretched out the hand that held the device, still a respectable distance away from the Ruling. For a few painfully silent moments, the ruler immersed herself in some document that she’d pulled up on the screen. With each line she read, she felt her heart fall further and further towards the floor. Then came the anger, then the shame and the horror, followed by more rage directed at herself, at the Senate and last, but not least, at her own mother.

“Lieutenant”, she said, finally, struggling to keep her tone even through the blanket of pain and indignation which were still gnawing at her insides. “Order three of the best shamans and the Fifth of the Seniv battalion to come here. Everyone in formal mourning wear. Immediately!”

For a moment, the young woman’s gaze just hung in the air between them, her eyes open wide, not understanding. The Fifth of the Seniv battalion and not one, but three shamans? Just to carry out the body of some lieutenant from the Reserves?

“But, M’Lady”, she began, but Wotar cut her off with a raised hand and a chilling look on her face, which radiated suffering an shame.

“I am not your Lady, lieutenant, not by right”, the Ruling cast her eyes downward.

It took the Warden a little while to understand that the other water lady was looking at the cadaver on the floor.

“This,” Wotar continued with some effort, “This woman here before us is more your Ruler than I could ever hope to be. Aeris Tan, lieutenant, remember this name very well and always utter it with due reverence for her heroism. Aeris Tan is the windstorm that the Senate had selected some ten rotations ago to become the next Ruling over Storms.

The Warden gawked at her, even wider than before, shifting her gaze back and forth between Wotar and the dead woman on the floor a few times. It couldn’t be… Ten rotations ago the Senate had concluded that the Gift of wind was too unstable to successfully transfer power to the Northern Twin. The list of super ara and ara level candidates was too short and the potential future Ruling over Storms had disappeared without a trace. It couldn’t be… it just couldn’t… and yet, here she was.

Creek had merely glimpsed a few recordings from the attach on the city and still some key elements which she couldn’t quite piece together logically had stuck with her. Like the several sudden, almost hurricane level winds which had started and just as suddenly disappeared throughout Syfis. Several spots, which now that she thought about it, marked along the line of one of the shortest paths from the barracks to the office building atop which the terrorists had planted their kriyan machine.

Windstorms had become so rare nowadays, that there were young women like Creek, who had only a vague idea about the abilities of this dying Gift’s carriers. And still, she, along with goddess knows how many millions of citizens of Syfis, owed their lives to precisely such a woman. Just one woman with power over the Storms. This revelation filled her with both awe and deep reverence.

Aeris Tan. The windstorm, who, through her heroism, had managed in a single day to restore in the citizens of the Southern Twin their warrior spirit and the hope that everything would somehow be alright. Her limitless power had cut short the carnage and destruction of the capitol. Such strength was the stuff of legend, and now Aeris had become legendary herself. A legend had been born, risen to pick a crumbling world on her shoulders and just as quickly, had faded away.

And all the faith, hope and love she had inspired, would soon fade too. For the Ruling over sea had been improperly installed on the throne and the Ruling over storms was lying dead in her feet. Suddenly, lieutenant Creek felt very, very cold.