Chapter 16: Undoing, Ravelling
That was when I saw the truth of the Mavi. Not children or sisters or parts or beasts. Neither were they servants or mothers. They were us, as we were meant. Save for my hostess, corrupted by love, who transcended it all and found no way home. Surely we could be better. Surely the Sapphire light would take us back.
Golden Roots
The act of dismantling a massive palace designed to honour the horror of the fell-queen's regime, the Fiend's presence, and the subjugation of all of Lafleur. It was incredibly liberating. Em and I spent a lot of time arguing over just what we planned to do, but eventually they had an idea I didn't fully understand.
"Seriously, Delia. Trust me. Either it will work, or it'll do nothing. And you'll look even more badass than Jasmin because everyone will see it." They'd just told me to put every bit of cold-flame I could muster behind me and push it into the floor of the mansion. Supposedly, it would do something marvellous. "Do you trust me?"
"You did try to kill my sister." I set a hand to my hip. "So there's that."
"I did no such thing. Your sister offered her life as proof of her determination." They smiled broadly at something before adding. "Just because I accepted the offer doesn't mean I was trying to kill her. Now do the thing."
· What's the worst that could happen? ·
"Fine," I sighed, giving in at once to both Em and the Voice. "Where and how."
They dragged me out the front door of the palace and stood me at the top of the steps leading up to it. "Hey everyone! Look up here! This is either going to be really interesting or really silly!"
My cheeks heated under the collective gaze of our group. Eleven bodies, including me. Roisin was more the sort for this manner of excitement, but she was nursing that shoulder.
"Okay, now just cold-flame the floor where you're standing. I can't explain it. I can't do it." Em shrugged helplessly. "Good luck!"
They bounded down the steps and leapt into Tenebra's arms, kissing her fiercely when she caught them.
· You know what happens if it works, right? ·
"What?" I knelt and put a hand on the deck outside the door.
· You accept that you're something more. Something new. Like her. ·
An image of Roisin's smile under a blue and silver glow flashed through my mind. "That doesn't sound half bad, if I'm honest. What do I do?"
· Think of what you want. Connect with the soul of it. Your soul will handle the rest. ·
I envisioned first the rubble of the place, but that wasn't right. I didn't want rubble. Then the complete clearing of its space. But that was wrong as well. Nothing seemed to suit what I wanted.
A trail of ivory and crimson flowers leading back to safety. Dasara, the doll whose proper name was Linna. Golden flowers, soaked in blood, but just as brilliant.
My breath hitched at the last image. Something shifted under my hand. Once it started, I couldn't stop it. The first sign was a green stem pressing itself out from under my hand, followed by those same golden flowers. Rather than pulling my hand back, I pushed harder, letting my mind shape it.
I didn't look up. It was hopeless and silly. There was no way this could possibly work. So I just humoured myself. Certainly one of the goddesses was helping. Jasmin had slipped around and was doing it. Or perhaps Nyx. Maybe Vaelis —
· Where is Vaelis? ·
The question lingered. Where was she? My mind worked its way backward. She hadn't been there when Roisin came down the stairs. Not when Nyx told her story. She hadn't been there when we regrouped after fighting the lizard beasts. On the smithy's roof. Her bow in hand. She was there. And then she wasn't.
Jasmin's arms effortlessly pulled me up from my spot and rushed to the street where the others were still standing. I had missed something. My eyes traced back to the pa— There wasn't a palace there. It was a great stone structure covered in golden flowers.
I couldn't even take joy in the sight. Where had Vaelis gone?
Torn and Tattered Loss
"She was at the smithy. She drew her bow from that crimson flower." I said, looking at each person.
"Bloodleaf," Roisin interjected, staring off as if reading from a book only she could see. "Nara's Riddle. The crimson rest. Lifeblood of the valley."
"Not helping," I cut her off. Apparently she'd learned a lot in the year we'd been apart, which was nice, but it was getting us off track. "But then I didn't see her after. Did anyone else?"
Silence all around. We'd all been so caught up, we missed her disappearance.
"Can we talk for a moment about how you got a much cooler benefit from whatever this all is," Roisin again, offering very little. "I mean, I can heal people, sure. And I'm really fast. And I have a stunningly beautiful wife who loves my cooking. But you just," she stood up her left arm like a building and mimed it coming down, "vanished a whole damned palace, Deels."
Jasmin put a hand over Roisin's mouth. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, dearest," she said with something like a snarl, "but save your energy. I'll be putting it to better use later."
Roisin's whole body went bright red. Accented with her sapphire scars, she was a sight to see. An image of someone else flashed in my mind. I didn't immediately know the face, but she could've been Roisin's twin if she were a touch less robust.
· Linna. The Mavi all used to look similar. ·
Long shot. Why was I thinking of Linna right then? I knew she was Vaelis's Mavi. And the Fiend. But what did that have to do with anything. "Why would I think of Linna?"
"What about Linna?" Tenebra's whole person perked up.
Had I said that aloud? "Just then, Roisin made me think of her, I suppose."
"Vaelis loved that girl like a mother," Roisin pulled Jasmin's hand down as she spoke. "Wore her hair like Linna. When she was lucid. We could go check the Violet Cathedral. Couldn't hurt."
"What's left of it anyway," Jasmin said, blushing.
Roisin looked up at Jasmin. "Do I want to know?"
Jasmin shrugged. "I hope you didn't want to see my childhood home again. That could be a challenge to make happen."
The laughter that shook Roisin was infectious, spreading to everyone within Kovar and Iron smithy. How could they not laugh with her bright mood in the room. My chest was suddenly heavy as I realised how much I thought I had lost forever.
"Okay. What's left of the queen's monument to herself," Roisin said as she recovered, "we should start there."
Tenebra, Jasmin, Em, Roisin, and I took to the streets, leaving the others at the smithy. It was getting dark, and the children would need to sleep. Beside that, Nyx and Tal seemed to be getting fatigued with so much happening in a single sun. The lizard beasts, Roisin, the deimward palace. And now Vaelis.
No one could blame anyone for being exhausted.
After all that had happened, the city was changing drastically, but those changes were only a small part of the unease I felt stepping onto the streets at dusk. The whole of Lafleur felt different. The sun still shone, the stars still sparkled, the goddesses still breathed. But there was an electricity in the air I couldn't name.
"Has your sister always glowed in the dark?" Jasmin was whispering to Roisin, but not as an attempt to hide her curiosity. More to draw my own ear.
I turned toward her. "What do you mean by that?"
She didn't shy away from my question. Instead, she took my hand and pulled it from my body. "Do you not see this?" Roisin moved in tight on the arm Jasmin held in place. "You see it, right dearest?"
"Jas is right, Deels," Roisin said softly. "You are glowing."
That drew Tenebra's attention, and she got a touch too close as she moved from top to toes, staring and sniffing. Em jerked their wife back and made to answer, but cut themself off. It was Tenebra who finally said something.
"Strange. I haven't seen that in a long while." She turned her eyes deimward. "Ladies, Em and I need to go investigate something. You head on to the rubble of the Cathedral, and we'll catch you up."
"Why? What's happening?" My breath was short. The world spun.
"Nothing to worry over, Fluxy Mouse," Tenebra smiled, reverting to her old nickname for me before grabbing Em's wrist and retreating. Before turning a corner, she called over her shoulder, "Find Vaelis. She'll be able to confirm."
"Certainly not the strangest thing that's happened in the last year," Roisin said weightlessly. "Well, I suppose we continue on as planned then."
Kovar and Iron smithy was a couple of miles from the centre of the city. We could've chatted the whole way there, but Jasmin and Roisin seemed lost in the hands they were holding, so it gave me plenty of time to think.
Why had Vaelis suddenly vanished? What would've made her abandon the fight instead of joining us? How did the Voice know she'd vanished?
· Now you are asking the correct questions. ·
'Great.' I knew it heard my thoughts, so I thought at the Voice rather than speaking aloud. No plausible deniability if it was just me, Jasmin, and Roisin when I blurted out annoyances at a Voice no one else could hear. 'But you're not going to answer them, so what good will it do to ask them in the first place?'
· Do you know what The Path is? ·
'No,' I lied. It surely knew that, but maybe I could get more information out of it. I had everyone's memories, or at least glimpses of them, from the cycles. I had heard of The Path. I'd been forced to walk it in several cases. 'Enlighten me, oh dreaded foreseer of foresight and futures.'
· Don't be difficult. I'm here to help. But since you know about The Path, you know I can't answer how I know anything, just that I know things. ·
'I know, but a girl can dream, can't she? Can you at least answer who you are? Are you Elia Gideon? Are you Linna? Let me know if I get close.' I began shuffling faces through my imagination. None of them seemed to stick.
· Yes. No. No. And certainly not. But you do know me. ·
'Less than helpful.' I scowled at the response. Hopefully the voice would know I was scowling, or it was wasted in the quickly falling darkness. 'Since I'm finally searching for her, can you tell me where Vaelis went at least?'
Silence. Not another peep from the Voice. Rude. Still, I had more information than before. Though I didn't have much time to think on it, as we arrived at last to the courtyard surrounding what used to be the Violet Cathedral.
Roisin whistled, impressed. "You did that, darling?" She stepped onto the first bits of rubble, kicking idly at them as she went. "Was it the flowers? I saw you doing something like Delia did earlier. Just before I — Well, you know."
"I do know," Jasmin grimaced around the words before lighting her emerald cold-flame. It'd be terrible in a forest, but we were in the city, so it gave the whole scene an eerie sort of ambience. "And yes. I tore down the queen's little den of darkness with silverthorn vines and flowers. The Queen's Home was destroyed by Queen's Heart. Poets will write songs about the event."
"Either of you two know what we expect to find here?" I needed us to be on track. Jasmin's voice had darkened as she spoke, and I didn't want her to spiral under the pressure of memory. "How would we even know Vaelis came through here?"
Roisin stared dumbly at me. "That wasn't exactly part of the plan. If she was here, I just assumed we would know."
While I had to admit Roisin was correct, I could hardly give her credit for luck. We found a sign of Vaelis. And a sign of someone else. But to explain either would require context. I hadn't previously possessed.
Roisin and Jasmin had met Vaelis early in their journey after Powell's Square. A crazed lost soul intent on convincing them they were Afina and Salora. While that lost soul wasn't technically wrong, they were far from correct. Roisin, I learned, was becoming Salora's Mavi. And Jasmin was becoming the next Salora. But they hadn't arrived there yet.
The lost soul travelled with them for a time before beginning to show signs of being far more than a lunatic. They knew things. They had abilities no one had ever heard of. And every so often, their hair went scarlet, their eyes went violet, and they spoke with the gravity of time.
Being around Jasmin and Roisin seemed to help. Eventually, Vaelis returned in full, but still broken. She travelled with them to Shallowroot Thicket, where she stayed behind. Tenebra found her and reunited everyone. But the important thing happened in the Thicket.
Roisin and Jasmin tied up Vaelis's hair in two bundles, parallel strokes down the sides of her face. They used scraps from their own clothes. Nice clothes they'd bought in Blue Stone.
That's what we found in the rubble. Scraps of their clothes. And a note.
Leaves of blood endure only where roots of gold provide anchor and thorns of silver protect. The Huntress returns. Her Lady is needed.
— Va Nara
Shadows Past
We returned to the smithy near midnight and dragged Nyx from her bed. "Would you find it strange," she said, already wide awake, "if I told you there were only two possible places Vaelis could be? And while one is more likely, the other cannot be discounted."
The moment she'd read the note, she'd jumped to her feet with a force that shook the whole third landing of the building. I knew there were five hundred years' experience, thousands of years' knowledge, and incredible instinct in the woman, but the speed and certainty of her reaction still shocked me. Nyx didn't even seem to mind that we'd awakened her. Tal, somehow, didn't wake even with her wife's noises.
She paused in the hallway as she gently closed the door behind herself. "Are you aware," she gave me the same scrutinising look the others had hours before, "that you are glowing, Flux?"
I rolled my eyes at her. "So I've heard, but right now there are more important things than what's probably just cold-flame exhaust or some other thing I've never seen before."
Her face twisted into something like uncertainty, but she let it go. "Fair point," she smiled. "Vaelis is either in the library in Greywatch Spire, or else she's gone back to Elder Valley. Where her temple sits, only revealing itself to those who need it and trust they will find it."
Roisin raised a hand. "She's pretty certain her temple, her whole garden really, is gone."
"And she's right about the garden, but Vaelis was cleverer by half than any of her sisters – or children, depending on her mood on a given sun." Nyx ran her fingers through her fiery hair, the dark skin of her hand being subsumed by the false heat of it. "She had two. One was explicitly in the garden. The Valleyleaf Crucible. Rather than a proper temple, it was a vast herb garden.
"The other was a modest gazebo, barely big enough to fit twenty people in it, designed to fit ten comfortably." Her eyes gleamed at a memory. "Vaelis was the embodiment of Balance in Lafleur. Her temple put all souls on even footing – or even seating, as it were. And she provided counsel not as a goddess, but as a friend."
A hand went up again, but Roisin didn't immediately speak. She waited for Nyx to acknowledge her. Growth. Whomever taught her that deserved a reward. "Why would she be in Greywatch Spire? That's almost the opposite end of Lafleur from the Crucible."
"Linna's son was buried there. So was her husband."
There was a finality to the words that drew out a silence from all of us. The Fiend had a family. I supposed I knew that on some level, but to hear it stated was something else entirely.
· Well that happened sooner than expected. ·
I didn't have a chance to ask what the Voice meant. The building groaned. Or perhaps the world did. Not an earthquake, but something bigger. Something more terrifying. And yet, I felt at peace with it.
Everyone froze. Jasmin's grip on Roisin's hand tightened. So I hadn't imagined it.
"Marward," Nyx said. I shouldn't have known the word, but it was the direction of Mara, the star taken from the sky. The star that pointed to Tenebra's lost city, but more immediately to the watchtower that had once been her pavilion in the Grand Temple.
When the groaning subsided, our tensions held on. At least a quarter-hour, probably more, passed in that hallway without a word from any of us. Would another quake happen? What even caused the first? Was it more of those monsters with Devouring soulfire?
Rather than continue to stand around helplessly, we moved to the first landing and into the kitchen. That was Roisin's go-to under stress. Cook something and feed the people she loved. As she worked, theories started being thrown around, but they only made things more tense.
Like liquid shadow, a form materialised from the corner. Tenebra carrying a nauseated Em. Apparently they didn't care for her shadow walking. But more importantly, Tenebra looked different somehow.
If I thought before that Tenebra was the darkness perfected, that there could be no deeper form of shadow in Lafleur, I was wrong. An odd sort of dark glow emanated from her, just above perception, sucking in the light and releasing something else. An empty void wrapped around her terrifyingly. Her eyes that had once been simple onyx in obsidian things were the depth of the night sky, stars breaking through the black.
A brilliant smile broke up the darkness, showing her teeth. "One moment ladies – and wife." Her voice echoed impossibly. Not loud, just different. She stood Em on their own feet and then vanished back into the shadow, returning seconds later with Tal.
Both of them glowed like that, Tal's hair the same sapphire of Roisin's.
"I have good news everyone," she said with a childish giggle.