Lordrin POV

That was…

It took me several days to bring Gresha city back under control. There were no civilian casualties, which helped matters, but rumor was a greater power than any weapon. Ultimately, while numerous guards were badly injured and a small handful died, the greatest damage was not in loss of life or collateral damage, but in the way it shook Gresha’s trust in the temple. A priestess cracking under the responsibility was not completely unheard of, but for one to kill multiple guards, run away with a barbarian dog, and wield strange magics, it made the people wonder if the temple had inadvertently let a warlock or vampire into their number. And that caused people to become nervous. Both commoners, and those ranked higher amidst our society. Even Forya was not immune.

It was as if Nania had kicked a hornet’s nest, and sent the whole city buzzing, but at least they were only buzzing, for now. No civilians had acted on any fool notion, yet. We were granted enough time to restrain the barbarian and rogue priestess, and to hold a public funeral for the killed guards. The funeral further gave me an opportunity to formally address the court, the temple, and the people, and to give them the explanations they so desperately craved. Official explanations, to stamp out the rumors. Once given an explanation from the Crown-Son, most of them would become relieved and complacent. With reasons, logic, and expectations to cling to, to trust, they could confidently stride forwards knowing that something like this wouldn’t happen again.

I tried my best to direct as much of the blame and vitriol away from Nania and the temple as possible. The temple was a powerful symbol of culture, power, and order in Gresha, older than my family’s claim to the throne, while the power that Nania wielded could be an incredible asset, if only we could make her see reason once more. So instead I spun a pretty narrative not far off from the truth. A young Candidate shunned by her compatriots for her plain looks and incredible talent. A vile, wicked Angran warrior, who used his trickery and deceit to poison her lonely heart against her City. A mad scheme, as the cowardly warrior used the priestess to escape the only redemptive act he could have used his worthless life for.

A pretty story, aligning with the facts as Gresha knew them. I was sure the rumor mill would continue to buzz away, but in all likelihood it would remain merely that: buzzing. That could be handled. Perhaps it would even work in our favor.

But it would not be quite enough to handle those who believed themselves more powerful than I. After the funeral, Forya insisted upon speaking to me in private. From her body language, I knew she believed herself to have cornered me, and assumed she had left me little choice but to listen to her. Her icy eyes bored into mine. Really, the Head Priestess could be so dramatic…

“What are you going to do about the prisoners? You should hold the Rite of Sunset earlier so this doesn’t happen again, I’ve already arranged for the priestesses to begin preparations so there will be no excuses about time. As for the girl, I’ve always said she was lazy and mischievous. It shouldn’t be surprising in the slightest that she was dabbling with Hell magic, we should execute her immediately—”

“Forya, think very carefully what accusations you levy. If a Priestess-Candidate were using Hell magic, the blame would fall on your shoulders as the one supervising her education, not mine,” I replied smoothly.

The response was instant and electric. She grimaced at the accusation, her posture going rigid, as if someone had pressed frigid metal against her spine. “You are king. And you are the one who wished to promote a warlock to the role of Head Priestess. If you aren’t careful, perhaps the tales told of you will call you Gresha’s Demon-King,” Forya said gruffly.

“It was not Hell magic. According to the legends, Hell magic produces demons. Not only that, legends say it makes practitioners’ skin and hair go white, and their eyes turn blood red. They become like the Restless, wandering the mortal realms because Crown Naruune forbids such a blasphemer from ever returning to the soil. If Candidate Nania were using such foul magics, we’d know,” I said.

“Then by Heaven and Hell, what was she using!?” Forya practically exploded. “No human can use magic that quickly, and on such a grand scale! It’s simply impossible! Only the gods and Hell magic practitioners can accomplish such feats! And she is clearly not a god!”

“Then I suppose we’ve been fortunate to have one so beloved by the gods fall into our lap,” I said. “And it would be both blasphemous and foolish to execute such a blessing. The Crown would think we were spitting in her face.”

“It’s impossible for a brat like that to be beloved by the gods, there’s no other possibility but Hell magic!” Forya seethed.

I smirked. “Are you saying that the Crown-Son, Naruune’s most beloved child, is incapable of recognizing like favor borne by another?” I asked.

Forya narrowed her eyes at that. “Careful, Lordrin. You are my son before you are the Crown’s.”

“Head Priestess. Feeling particularly heretical today, are we?” I asked, crossing my arms and refusing to show signs of weakness. Too long, my father had allowed this woman to believe she was the true power behind the throne. I would not make the same mistakes, and I would put her in her place.

Forya grit her teeth, wrestling with her rage as her body tensed. Finally, her shoulders slumped with a sigh. “Very well. If you are capable of handling her, then keep the dreadful girl alive. She is well-suited for you, Crown-Son. But the Rite of Sunset must be sped up; I will not compromise on this.”

And that brought my mind to Nania.

The girl confounded me. I had misread her entirely, but only because she was such an anomaly. She had the Crown-Son himself offering her power and prestige, what use did she have for lowly a Angran dog? I had thought she was perfect. Defiant, yet unambitious. Cute to toy with, yet not a simpering dog. What could a dog offer her that I couldn’t? Unless…

Unless she was more like me than I realized. Toying with one lower than herself, as I toyed with her. Well, that changed things. Only the Crown was fit to be the hand moving pieces on the board; I’d now have to rethink promoting her to Head Priestess. It wouldn’t do to have a second Forya around me.

I dragged out a sigh of my own. Perhaps losing her Angran toy would make Nania more agreeable. I suppose I’d have to wait and see how Nania reacted, but certainly the Angran would have to go. And so I replied to Forya, “Very well, Head Priestess. I agree to the sacrifice of two of the captives—the two men, we’ll save the woman for the official date. Just ensure that the one who broke out is the first to be put to the flame. Will that tide your Fiend over?”

Before my eyes fully registered the motion, her hand was moving. It stopped inches from my cheek, shortly before it touched me. A backhanded slap—she was actually going to stop me! I glared at her with accusatory eyes, gleefully noting how her expression was somewhere between rage, guilt, and embarrassment. To react so volatilely, and to her own Crown-Son; she must be embarrassed!

Quickly she reassembled her mask and turned away from me, preparing to beat a hasty retreat. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but have the last word, always. “It is good we have finally reached an agreement, Crown-Son.”

Sarya’s POV

Gosh. What a day. What an awful, long night, and what an even longer day! People saying so many things, you weren’t even sure what to believe! When the bells first rang in the middle of the night, we were all half-asleep, thinking it was a late-night Angran raid and that we’d have to evacuate. We hadn’t even noticed Nania was gone at first, she was always so quiet, always wandering off. I suppose I was a little worried, once I noticed. Sure, she had always been a little strange, and had gotten even stranger as she grew, but they were saying there was a Hell magic user out there! Well, I wasn’t sure it about a real Hell magic user, but it was dangerous, and the girl always seemed to have her head in the clouds.

Imagine my surprise when the Crown-Son announced that Nania herself had been involved! And some of those rumors, just awful. Of course Nania wasn’t the nicest among us, but she seemed harmless enough, when you left her alone, if a bit rude. Perhaps I’d feel bad for her, but she always seemed happier on her own. At least she wasn’t like Dennia. The girl wanted to be Head Priestess, and she could be ruthless. Not even staying out of her way was enough to stop her—I’d heard she’d pushed Nania from a window, when a rumor spread that the Crown-Son was interested in the poor girl. It seemed like balderdash at the time to me, but recent events have made it clear Nania really did have the Crown-Son’s eye on her.

There was no avoiding a girl like that. But a little honey and a little politeness went a long way in making sure she remembered you once she hit the top, I was sure. Not that I really wanted to improve my standing any, I just wanted to avoid messy spats like that. Nania had been a lesson why standing around and not picking a side would only get you caught in the middle, I had thought, but now it seemed she had picked a side, after all. It was just tough to say that it was the right one.

“Ooh, gosh, the Crown-Son’s all-knowing and wise, but does he really expect us to believe that?” I found myself saying to Dennia, that evening. “I don’t know how Nania got his attention in the first place, but you know the things the girl was saying a few weeks ago, she sure didn’t sound tricked…”

“The Honored Mother herself confided in me that she really was using Hell magic,” Dennia said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Really?” I gasped. The gasp seemed to echo down the hall, as other Candidates surreptitiously listening in began making their own speculations. Hell magic—even a girl as strange as Nania, where could she possibly pick that up? It sounded like another of those outlandish rumors. But this was Dennia—she had the Head Priestess’ ear, and rumor had it that while she wasn’t the Crown-Son’s preferred pick, she sure was Head Priestess Forya’s. Going against her now would just land me in all sorts of trouble, and, well. It sounded like Nania had picked up a shovel and decided to meet the Crown Mother prematurely, as they say.

“Gosh,” I said again, “I mean, I didn’t think it was really serious enough to be Hell magic, I mean...well, when’s the last time anyone’s seen a demon? Back around the last time the Sun Fiend was around, right?” I nodded my head, prompting a few other Candidates to do the same. Dennia looked on with her cool green eyes, dark as the Deep Woods.

“Erenya talked about there being a demon in the southern continent, years ago! The Sun Falcon himself had to put it down!” one girl said.

I scoffed. “Priestess Erenya can’t have seen it herself, priestesses aren’t allowed to leave Gresha. Whoever told you was telling tall tales,” I said.

“Well. If it took the Sun Falcon, Crown Arcturus himself, to stop the incursion of Hell magic last time, then it only goes to show how powerful the Crown’s chosen are, that we managed to properly contain a warlock without his help,” Dennia said. When she spoke, the other girls stopped to listen, and once she finished, they began to nod and agree, speaking up with pride for their city-state. I couldn’t say she was wrong at all, it was a pretty famous story she was referencing. There were few stories about the Sun Falcon Crown Arcturus compared to Crown Naruune, but most of them did involve a fair bit of demon slaying. There was a reason they called him the Light of Judgment.

“Crown Naruune’s the cultivator of the earth and seas, that’s true,” I said. “Well...if it’s real Hell magic, we should work to sacrifice them quickly. Only a creature like the Sun Fiend would be able to deal with something so awful, right?” If it was indeed Hell magic, then that was right scary. It was getting to be something beyond what we could deal with, and I wasn’t sure how safe I felt sleeping in my own bed at night. That was a new feeling, wasn’t sure I liked that.

“Let the monsters take care of each other,” Dennia said, smoothly. The conversation flowed on to other topics from there, but even as we all went to bed and I spied the empty bed that was Nania’s, I felt a chill up my spine that couldn’t be chased away by blankets or the Sun Season heat.

I felt a pang of regret. Maybe she just needed some guidance. It wasn’t often Candidates helped each other, but maybe if someone had gotten her on Dennia’s good side, a mentor and guide, she wouldn’t have been framed or fallen in with such awful powers. Whichever it was.

Raike’s POV

“No way was it Hell magic! Nuh-uh! It was Crown Naruune showing she wasn’t happy with us at all!” the man crowed. He was one of the farmers, I was sure, from his scarred and sun-tanned skin, now assisting with construction in the off-season as he chatted with his friends. From his beard and clothes I assumed he was a he, at least.

The dark-haired man continued to shout, over the blather and blabber, “Crown Naruune’s the mistress of the weather! There was little rain all Moon Season, and now a sudden rainstorm during the Sun Season? Crown Naruune’s trying to tell us something, you’re all just too deaf to listen! This never happened during the last Crown-Son’s era, nuh-uh.”

“And what exactly is she supposed to be telling us, huh? Wouldn’t the temple know better than you, old man?” another laborer with darker skin retorted, teasingly. The dark-haired man waved a finger at his friend.

“Nuh-uh, nuh-uh! The temple’s in on it too! They’re all in on it!”

“What are you even talking about?”

The scarred and dark-haired man leaned forwards and ‘whispered’ conspiratorially—and I say it like that because despite being a whisper, I could still hear it clearly from several feet away. “The Crown-Son’s impotent. The Crown knows that this line’s a dead end.”

A number of people in the early morning marketplace rolled their eyes, as they returned to trading and bartering. This only made the dark-haired man louder, over the laughter of a few of his friends. “You should listen to your Queen and Crown! The priestesses, oh, the priestesses want to take the power all for themselves, they’re making the Crown mad! Playing with fire, they are! A challenge, someone should challenge the Crown-Son for the Crown’s favor—”

“Are you working, or are you fooling around?” a guard spoke up, interrupting the dark-haired man. The man’s eyes darted between the guards moving in around him. They weren’t overtly threatening, but their presence alone was enough. Finally, the dark-haired man backed down with a huff, angrily banging nails into the fence he was mending.

Maybe he was right, I guess. But no matter how hard he shouted, he wasn’t much louder than any other rumor. Some of those voices had the authority of the Temple and the Crown-Son behind them, while others gained an authority all their own due to how salacious and dramatic they were. But none of those rumors seemed all that likely to me. I couldn’t help but feel like they were all missing a huge piece of context.

None of those rumors mentioned my eldest sibling.

The Angran they sometimes spoke about...he must have been the stranger that Ellie tried introducing to us, right? The one Ellie had an argument with Ma and Dad about. Their two closest friends had been involved in this scandal, and so there was no way Ellie wasn’t involved somehow, too. Even if I wasn’t sure how yet, it was a fact, one I felt deep in my heart. But Ellie hadn’t been seen in weeks. Not even the army knew their location, as we found out when they sent a representative to talk with Ma and Dad. Dad was nearly out of his mind with worry, working until his hands were rubbed raw.

Still. Rumors and gossip aside, the rest of the city was moving on. It didn’t really have much choice. As exciting as events like that were, we all still had to survive the next season, and the season after that, and so on. Strange weather and all.

When the sudden rainstorm had struck, I had been tasked with watching my youngest siblings, Kerri and Arene, as they played. We were close enough to the house that we could take shelter without any of us getting hurt, but I forced Arene to leave behind one of his favorite toys; a little wooden mama duck on wheels, smaller ducklings connected to it in a small train, all of them painted bright and friendly colors. But the rains washed it away while we were sheltering, and he’d been absolutely inconsolable. While my parents were going about their errands and trying to keep Arene distracted, they’d entrusted me with finding a replacement toy.

I wasn’t the only one shopping. People were out and about, sweeping the streets and doing repairs, or purchasing replacements for ruined garments and foodstuffs. Guards patrolled the city, while scribes and couriers dashed back and forth, checking what public buildings needed repairs. The sharp bantering cries cut through the petrichor scent in the air. Whether you were ready for it or not, the city moved on, but even as I went through my daily chores, I was still stuck wondering about that event. I couldn’t help but feel it was not yet over. We had seen the lightning, but had yet to hear the thunder. And now I was sitting, waiting for the thunder’s roar.

I sat waiting for the thunder, even as I found a new toy from the same stall, this time a wooden mama cow on wheels and her calves trailing behind. It did not boom as I returned home, as junior Priestesses examined the worn-away runes on fallow fields, as homemakers mended clothes and fences and walls. It did not roll when the record-keepers checked on the granaries, or the fishwives haggled in the markets. Still, the sky stayed quiet as the guards went about their evening patrols and the city-dwellers and farmers ate their evening meal, even as the rest of the city forgot that lightning had struck at all, forgot they were still waiting with baited breath.

But the truth of the world was, once lightning struck, thunder became inevitable. And the first peel of thunder rang out when we received a visitor. Having finished my meal first, I went to the door to greet them, and there stood the person I’d been wondering and worrying about, their form silhouetted by the setting suns, their hair painted a halo of reds and oranges.

“Ellie? Where have you been…?”

Talon POV

To be stuck in a cell and left forgotten, to rot, is an awful fate. I have never been a forgiving or merciful type. I can choose to be petty, vindictive, sadistic, awful. If I were given the Sun Falcon’s position and left the arbiter of human justice, I’d make murderers and butcherers eat their own flesh. Thieves would be made to watch their homes burn, traitors relieved of their tongues and hands, and those who hoard food they don’t need would be made to starve. To rot. To choose between feasting on rat flesh, and dying in the most humiliating fashion. Elian was always the merciful one, even if I couldn’t understand why. How sharing the concept of life could be enough for a pardon, when they chose to do such rotten things with it. But perhaps I could begin to understand. To be left in a cell is a unique type of evil. One I was no longer certain I’d wish on even my worst enemy.

You are cut off from the world, separated, as though Hell has reached out and plucked you away from everything you ever knew. Outside the sun still shines and rain still falls. Outside, the world continues on without you. But you are stuck, frozen, ignorant. You are left to dwell on your wounds, to dwell on the last things you witnessed before everything was snatched away. Some prisoners might know the fate of some of their loved ones. If their friend were the one to abandon them there, perhaps there was a unique closure all their own in swearing vengeance to be found. But worse than the sting of betrayal is a perpetual uncertainty. Not knowing what happened to those you cared for. One may as well make up their own reality in a mad bid for closure. To avoid the maddening wait for an ending that will never come. Perpetually.

Again. I was caught. Captured.

Frozen.

I was lucky. I was very lucky. Later, I would get to piece together what had occurred. Bit, pieces, fragments; here and there. Later, I would receive the merciful finality of thunder, for this missing period of my life at least. But at that moment, I was left in a Hellish limbo, forgotten and banished by the rest of the world. That single instant could have been its own lifetime. A lifetime of staying trapped in the darkness, my bruises and aching muscles wearing away at me, my fingertips rubbed raw by a failed attempt to claw my way to freedom. Little better than a caged beast.

As I paced, my fingers brushed against something. Cool, smooth. Nania’s ribbon. It fell from my hair when I was shoved back in here. After all I had been through, it must have already been fairly loose. I spent a few moments rubbing along its texture. Losing my mind in here would gain me nothing. Then I stiffly began to tie my hair back.

The world moved on without me. I would continue to sit. And wait. Until they came back for me.

Somewhere back in the Deep Forest, a rare crimson bird returned to its roost. Alone. And those who still dwelled there were quick to notice.

A decision was reached, then and there, though it would take a few days longer for both to agree: now was the time for one to return.