An old decrepit queen sat tiredly on a throne.

Her silvered hair and wrinkled expression made her likely to have causes. She was looking at the one whose eyes were on her. She was young and the toy she had was simply one only little ladies of her age who grew up in a well-kept environment would have.

“My daughter, your teacher told me that you have blue blood. A blood that is similar to our Patriarch?”

She spoke the words of power in response. The sprites that her mother couldn’t see gathered into visible forms and expressed themselves in the form of beautiful lights.

“My daughter… you really are the chosen of our bloodline.”

She eyed her daughter with pained sadness. As if she didn’t want to continue this path, but nonetheless was a path that should be taken.

“You are our hope. You carry the true blood of Aon. You shall show the world that we were the righteous one. That we were right to have thrown them back to the forests where they belonged.”

The dream ended for her like it always has. She looked around then turned her body to the side where the mirror she had kept for a hundred years was still around. Felecia had grown mature. Her face was far from that young heiress look.

Such old dreams are like nightmares and after spending years in this fleet. She came to understand that even if she was able to convince some of the fleet to act upon her behalf. It’ll be a long journey and years of being one of the companions of Gaspar has made her aware of how little she cared for that blood of hers.

She wasn’t like Lady Rosalve who had made it her path to care for the blinder. She wasn’t Zyra who was bound by an oath. Nor was she the rest of the Elven who held belief in a singular path that made them like a collective mind.

She wipes her face on the basin and caresses the lower part of her right cheek and then uses the water to wake herself up. Wearing her clothing, she takes a step out of her cabin and finds that same banner of light planted in the middle of the elder spring.

Terin Gaspar.

He was a farm boy.

A simple-minded farm boy who was rather kind for someone who might have been told to fight a war once. She really wasn’t sure about that, but she at least understood that Caldor Ando knew he had potential and in a way was right.

He had become the Blinder.

He slept for years, but nonetheless, he was still the Blinder who’s holding the world that the fleet knew.

He had started to hold on the power and was now using it to keep the fleet safe. Something she had expected him to do. He was simple, but she was unsure how to handle someone who had not aged and had slept. Only to wake up when the fleet needed him the most.

Among the many she knew.

Terin was the most simple.

The most awful puppet of them all.

She liked to believe she was treading the paths.

But the masters of the eleven-kin are arrogant creatures. Long-lived beings who are slaves to the paths taken. They are servants of a parasitic creature that dulls their mind and reason, like living and sentient tools who are unaware of the leash that has been placed on them.

They are simply slaves.

Powerful slaves that are bound and commanded by what they call a Mother. The same mother that had callously commanded them to stay in the shadows while the rest of Aon burnt.

The fleet had mostly forgotten their evil.

Had forgotten that back when Aon was struggling on its knees, begging for them to be saved, they did not lift a finger. Not a single helping hand as the lands wilted and the water dried.

How they laid their hammer upon the lands of Aon even as the children begged for succor. Powerful beings that could reshape the land and bring kindness… instead they did nothing.

Cared for nothing but themselves.

Felecia loathed the Chancellor for taking away what was rightfully theirs. To cleave the heads of her blood for the sake of reuniting a broken continent.

She hated the Chancellor of Aon with every fiber of her being and yet not that she had wisened and saw the hypocrisy of these elves… She understood now why the Chancellor had to do such a thing. But she also can guess that the Chancellor was simply another one that they had allowed.

They can see the paths taken and knowing how the fleet ended up being formed. Felecial could conclude that this was all simply part of their plans.

The elven-kin do not work in a way that would benefit others. They function because it is their nature to be as practical and obedient to their Master as best as they could.

The Kin do not care for much other than obeying the purpose given to them. So she knew that their kindness was nothing more than what they were allowed to have.

Some may call her suspicious, but the stories and the journals that she had read back in her family’s castle had opened her eyes to the truth of how leashed they are.

And there were only a few who had found this leash loose on their necks. Driven by emotions that only despair could give. Love was an emotion that they tend to avoid and yet they continue on, broken by their love, and now leashed further by the Mother they all so love.

She might be wrong. Maybe they do think that this was the best for those who thrive under the sun, but she couldn’t ignore the evidence that her family had collected. The truths that have been recorded and jotted down. It could be false or slander, but nonetheless she had seen their callousness and hundreds of years hasn’t changed that.

***

She was walking around the island when she noticed the usual line that was happening on the small vertical treehouse that was made to house the clinic of the Doctor of Milostiv.

Doctor Gabrio was a strange one.

Among the fleet he was the least that she thought would still be alive. A man who was granted a treeheart by his mother as a reward for being true to himself.

She didn’t know he fit to all of this when even Lady Rosalve cannot see the paths he’d take. A wild card. Thinking back to the generations that he’d spent pointed to his role.

Felecia was unsure of the Doctor of Milostiv.

Gabrio Treeheart… a man who might as well have been turned into a perennial by certain forces. She didn’t have a good impression of him, thinking back to how impolite he was.

But as time passed, she began to understand that if there was someone who championed the people of the fleet, then it’s him. The fleet might obey the Kin, and they may worship Gabrio’s blinding light, but they would never trust him in a way they would trust the Doctor who would beg to allow him to help them.

He was the kind that as she spent years grew to appreciate. Never one to side without reason. A man who held beliefs that he would never break even at the thought of death.

It was that belief that gave him longevity.

He wasn’t in the paths taken.

He wasn’t leashed despite having a heart given by the Mother.

She had seen the leashes on everyone aboard and yet the Doctor remained what he was.

A slave to his profession.

A man whose ambitions are nil.

A man who only cared about his role and made no effort to gain power other than what he can achieve with his own. Dedicating himself to study, and the service of those who he thought kindly of.

A man of the people.

But at the same time she found it odd. His existence was a twisted one that was made out of tragedies. A student and disciple of the Butcher of Fort Rava, a man who should have been twisted by the circumstances.

He proved them wrong.

He remained true.

Or perhaps because he was untested that he could remain as who he was?

He was a weird one.

Someone whose role she was still unsure about.

She found herself near the clinic. The Doctor raised his head and calmly greeted her with that dull and bland expression that he had.

“Miss Felecia. How may I help?”

“Nothing. I see that you are busy despite Terin’s presence?”

“Indeed,” he looks up to the banner of light. “I would appreciate it if he could take care of their internal wounds as well.”

She blinked. “Does he not?”

“I think he can do it if he focuses,” he explained. “But think of his healing as only effective to external wounds. He rejuvenates those who are under him, but it does not do much internally.”

“Is it?” She focused on the power. The healing warmth does caress her external wounds, but does little when it comes to care for her innards just as he had said.

“You demand of him too much.”

“Not really. I’m speaking about what I observed.” He took a candy and then handed it over to a child who was pulling on his coat.

Felecia crosses her arms. “You’ve remained unchanged, Doctor.”

“Still chasing dreams of an Empire, milady?”

“Perhaps, I still am. Who knows?” She thought of something and asked. “Doctor, did you hate my family?”

“Your family? Ah, the Dynasty?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t think much of it. There is little reason for me to think of an aged dynasty. Though, if there is one thing that I am against, it was their treatment of my mind.”

“Your kind killed a king.”

“Not out of choice, but improper treatment. It got even worse to the point that we were lacking behind everything.” He kneaded his forehead. “But that is the past and we should thank Ristina for her dedication to the arts of medicine.”

“You speak as if you didn’t contribute.”

“I did not,” he said plainly. “I stand on the shoulders of giants and the magic of those who are powerful.”

“Do you think you can accomplish much if you have the tongue to speak words?”

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe I can?”

He spoke plainly and wore that thought on his sleeves. “The people appreciate you, Doctor.”

“That they do. I know them long enough to understand that.”

“You’re everyone’s Uncle.”

Gabrio stared blankly at that realization before sinking in his chair. Then, he sits properly and takes a look at the children running around the road.

“Milady, if you ever do create your own nation. I do hope that you do better than your kind. Just be… kind.”

“Hah, you say that as if you are expecting me to?”

He looked her in the eyes. “I think that you will… maybe if this voyage is over. I know that you are making moves of your own, and I do hope that when you place your pieces… that you consider those who are under you first.”

She takes a moment to understand him. She did not reply and took a step away from the clinic where she found the young and old visiting the Doctor.

Standing on the stone bridge located on the fall where the water flows from the elder spring. She thought of the paths she had seen for herself.

Everyone was leashed to something.

And despite hating the destiny that had been leashed upon her. Felecia knew too well that fighting destiny was like sailing a boat against a mountainous wave.

You might be able to get away with it.

But you will not be able to remain unscathed.

For all the legends and myths she has read as a child.

There were only so few of them that were able to fight off their fates.

Felecia wished she could be one of them.