#AND LOOK SASHI'S WEAPON HAS ARRIVED!!! 🤩🤩

[siderealxmelody]

It grinned tilting its head at the pair of them. It could just answer him, tell him yes and be done with his little history lesson. But this - that wouldn't be very fun now would it?

It turned its eyes to Anastasiya, Cassandra's heir if there ever was one. More than that brute of her sister was anyway - the one that lived anyway.

"Your her blood. Do you know why she was betrayed by her own people?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me Dunyasha."

Her tone was as harsh as Aleksander's, cutting and cold. It looked to the rafters, to the spirals it had watched be made by fae from its prison.

"Long ago a god slumbered. A thing that had many names but no awareness of its many followers. It was given many names, The Void, Urd, The Empty. A thing who was so vast its power wound between the worlds like a force. A secret language of the universe that only the stars spoke."

It was lost in its memories, what hazy ones it had from those brief moments of awareness. It didn't know if they spoke suddenly it didn't care. It had to tell someone this story - probably the most important story in the universe.

"Races would meet in it, set truces and pray in it. A neutral ground of sorts. A holy ground fit for all."

It dragged its eyes to them, to two people who seemed to complete each other so well there was room for nothing else. A balance and universe all unto themselves. Was that it was chasing? That feeling of oneness in itself that had been shattered and twisted?

"The Asteri found me and like everything else they do - they covet and subsume. Some of their ilk had told me they'd known me. Had worshiped me by title of Mother and their Dam eons before I woke. But it didn't matter, they woke me. They cleaved me open, shattered me. Forged a vat around a bit of my power. I was taken here, this pretty little valley - or it was then. I watched that castle of dragon glass be erected. I screamed as they tore me apart to wring me dry of every morsel of Firstlight and Secondlight they could."

Anastasiya swallowed, her voice shook and she made no effort to hide it. She had a horrible feeling of how this story was going to end.

"What does this have to do with my blood?"

It smirked leaned back against a table. The silence of the Fold outside defeaning.

"Clever girl to say your blood and admit that ugliness lives in you too. I see why your sister fears you. The Asteri conquered worlds, whispering of me the Wyrdchild, the Runechild - the Timelesschild. Legends get conflated with truths. I was no longer the thing they worship but the child of it. A blessing and gift for them being the favorite children of a Goddess that may or may not have ever existed."

It looked back to the journals scattered on the table. The silence hung between the three of them.

"They broke me in ways only something of flesh could be broken. Do you understand that? I was a think of infiniteness, I neither knew the pain of being violated like they did. Or the acute helplessness of being shackled and made to watch as someone I'd consider a friend tortured me for greed. She did in the end, Heketah was sent to study and befriend me. She did, 30,000 years I was under their thumb and a little sickly witch wormed her way into my being. I helped her stabilize the witch genes. And in return she had me strapped to a table and dug into my fork till I screamed and the firmament wept."

It closed its eyes feeling that deep pain, that echo it had been running from since it woke in this nightmare. A bone deep weariness that hung onto it like a shadow - neither of which it had.

"Asteri are matriarchal, they hold a tournament every 2,000 years to crown a new queen. Nearly 2,000 years ago Cassandra won hers. 500 years she tightened her reign. 500 years she gave fae more and more power, even let those Saints of yours into her court. She'd raised them, loved them as her own children."

Their eyes opened, hollow and broken. Crystals shattered by a cold and capricious child. Anastasiya wondered if this was its true form - or if there was ever a form it would feel that could reflect it. She was trembling, the grief was raw, horrible to even contemplate. How had it survived that? How had it even had enough sanity to peice itself together?

"I was granted my freedom if I could help destory her. I overpowered and possesed the gaurds and slipped free. But I was so weak, so incredibly tired and I withered away. Reborn again into some Asteri or another. I was reborn as Kheto, sister to the current High Lords of Night and Summer if those types of things matter to you. Kheto was furious, Kheto wanted revenge....and she got it. She taught Olenna of the Fae to make Fionn's little swords. And, well you all know how that ended. 500 years into her reign and Cassandra was toppled. She is alive, crawled away like the roach she is."

Its lips twinged, she'd been nice to it once before. Giving it honey and milk, trying to see if it liked their screeching noises that was apparently music.

It tapped the journal again and looked to Aleksander.

"Yes to your question. I didn't mean to make him go mad. He reminded me of Heketah, she was insatiable for the knowledge. But he didn't seem malicious in his thirst like she did. Perhaps you both would hold better with such knowledge and sight. The Asteri blood in you perhaps will protect you."

Anastasiya swallowed, she couldn't focus on any of that now. She'd let Aleksander answer the more pressing questions. She focused on Dunyasha, or whatever this thing was.

"We know you as Dunyasha. What does Dunyasha want?"

It tilted its head and smiled a tiny one at her.

"Dunyasha is how you will always know me child. And all I want is to wrought as much fear and horror as was done to me. I do not have the energy to be hunted so I chose to accept your summons. Do you still want me to work with you?"

Can you handle what I am?

Dunyasha looked over Ilyas words. The wayhis handwriting shook and twisted the deeper in the journal it looked. It turned to Aleksander, a gleam in its eyes. 

"Now I remember you. Your power speaks to me like your grandfather's did. Do you know the origin of your powers? Both of you?"

Anastasiya stepped toward the woman though she didn't look like one now. Too devoid of the light of a mortal. What had Cassian called her? A goddess of Death? A child carved from ivory and amber. 

"Heketah. She birthed the Saints, their blood flows in -"

She tisked giggling to herself as she touched the journal. Her nails had dried blood under them. Anastasiya noted that the blood seemed intentional as if she relished the way it felt on her skin. 

"Not just her blood. That little aptitude for Merzost doesn't come from Heketah or the Asteri blood in her."

She looked to them again. Stepping away to open her arms wide. The runes glowing a sickly silver in the dimly lit room. Like dirty snow on the bottom of a mountain. 

"She ran from Cassandra 20,000 years ago. She ran to my cell and destoryed herself. Her power ripped at my body then. I was so weak, so tired and I let myself perish."

She spoke as if this made any sense, as if this was fact. Anastasiya stepped closer to Aleksander her hand gripping his. Not in fear she didn't need him to sheild her. No, no it was a warning. This woman may be the best assassin in centuries. She may have some power to sustain injuries not even a fae could - but she wasn't mentally well. 

Dunyasha continued smiling at them. Seeming to relish having a captive audience. 

"I came back soon enough anyway. But my blood mixed with her children. 11 of them born from her blood and mine. 11 children capable of feats no witch had before them. 11 witches able to break through the barriers and touch the cold and unfeeling stars. Witches that could have been Asteri in their own right if their masters had let them."

Dunyasha tapped a sharp nail on the page. Anastasiya half feared she'd pierce the page. 

"Ilyas found me 1,000 years ago. I was newly free delirious with all the possibilities at my fingertips. He asked to share my knowledge to tell him how to make amplifiers. They could make weapons and magic that could cut an Asteri down. But no, no he wanted more than that. He wanted to become like them, to feel the world in the ways they did. Wholly and fully. So I showed him, I taught how to See..."

She grinned at Aleksander, teeth showing. Anastasiya leaned closer squinting. Was it a trick of the light or were her teeth filed to points?

"As you can see he didn't take it well -"

𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐒, rapt with focus, but trying to appear as if everything she says is something he knows, something he's heard before.

It isn't.

All of it is new, but then, his mother hadn't ever been very forthcoming with tales of the past. No matter how often he'd asked, as a young boy, the answers were always vague. He'd wondered if she'd done so intentionally, hoping he'd drop it. And after awhile, he had. Tired of not getting the right answers...

How does this one know so much? he wants to wonder, wishes it was possible to think, maybe, that she wasn't knowing so much--

Until she mentions his grandfather. Until that name falls from her lips as she nearly cuts through the journal's pages. That fingernail of hers almost clawing through the scrawled words of madness that Aleksander hadn't figured out yet.

❝ Was it you? ❞ The questions leaves his lips in a harsh tone, but an equally curious one, too. Anastasiya's hand in his is something he uses to ground himself. To let himself know that this is still real. All of it.

This assassin might not be all there, all right in the head. But what she says is something he needs to know. To understand.

❝ Were you the one that led him to madness? ❞

mention // @an-endless-saga