#when rebi said HER house she meant it

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Architectural Digest Fall/AD Open Door Part 2

Bailey: "We call this area Squad Headquarters."

Quinton: "It was important that all our offices and workspaces stayed together even though we made big changes to the layout of the house."

Bailey: "The twins actually spend more time in our offices and their rooms now that they are older. So the little princess basically has her own study."

Quinton: "She allows the fam to bring their laptops in and get work done with her."

Legend: "We have to bring snacks though."

Lyric: "And agree to be students in the various classes she offers."

Bailey: "Don’t forget by appointment only…"

-

Q's Office

Squad Study/Playroom

Bailey's Office

Cover Story - Part 1 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7

[shardclan]

“The penny-pinching curs would let us perish if it got them another coin!”

“They’re going to need some kind of recompense unless you want them breathing down Her Majesty’s neck until this time next cycle. You have to give them something.”

The subject of the Merchant’s Guild was hot enough that even Stellaria’s persistent thralldom was pushed from the forefront of her mind. However, she was much harsher and significantly less cool-headed than usual, perhaps owing to some sort of astral-related separation anxiety.

“I will give them nothing. Let them breathe where they wish, it’s Rebis’ job to uphold what is best.”

Caress curled her violet lips. Thralldom or no, Stellaria’s coarseness was testing her patience. “And it is your job, as literal Tribune of Shade-Damned Commerce, to promote positive standing with foreign merchants and keep our economy afloat.”

Rebis tapped her focus on the marble top for silence. “I appreciate you two returning to this topic so doggedly—” Polite words, they were stubborn as horn-locked melprins. “—But reparations must first go to livelihoods in Noon Point and to the restoration of the clan’s welfare system.”

Caress and Stellaria both shifted forward in their seats, Caress with far more effect as Stellaria was still bound to her chair.

“Without the support of the merchants there will be little chance of repairing the economic damage we’ve sustained.”

“Oh now you’re for supporting them?”

“I always supported them!” Stellaria snapped. “But I don’t think it should involve compensation!”

Caress punctuated her words with heavy slams of her pebbled fists. “They. Are. Merchants! What kind of support do you expect they’re going to want after two and half eons of lost business?!”

“Ladies,” Rebis said softly but meaningfully. “Recall that I was tutored under Saber and that I cut my teeth on merchant discussions when the guild tried to cook Telos for closing Thunder’s March due to the Outsider incident that preceded my hatching. I am prioritizing Aphaster City merchants, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to leave the Guild to hang.”

“Now. I value both of your opinions, but this isn’t a discussion that can be had fruitfully without the attendance of a representative of Trader’s Walk on site. So, for the 3rd time in as many days, shelve that discussion until we can have it fruitfully.”

The two women sat back in their seats with muffled huffs.

A gentle cough interrupted the discussion from the entry. Half the table rose, a bit stiffly and wearily, to its feet to greet Hart.

In his typical fashion, he nodded to them all and waved them back into their seats. Inside the half-circle, he regarded Rebis for the first time since her return. She looked good. Calmer and a bit harder. Truly and adult, and no longer his charge.

“You look well, my Queen.” He raised a carved chest with the emblem of Lightweaver emblazoned in gold on its center. “I’ve come to deliver your ceremonial garb. The clan has missed enough celebrations. So long as you are back, I thought you might not want to let Brightshine slip by.”

Rebis raised smiled. With Samhradh enthralled and lightborn dragons at too much risk, it fell to an Arcanite to praise the Light. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.  “You thought right, that would never do. Shall we all take a break?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The robes felt made for her. Like a gift granted to her for achieving the status of Archmage. When this was all over, she would have new clothes tailored to incorporate it as a part of her royal garb.

“At penalty of re-opening the issue,” said Flaga, as Rebis settled back into her chair. “May I request that any external reparations the clan is able to provide at all be provided to the Beastclans?”

Rebis rubs at her celestine jewelry. The centaurs have had to work by night in order to be safe in the Summerlands, and they have not been able to utilize the area near House Perihelion at all. Unless they could turn things around quickly and recover the spring-planted crops allowed to go wild it would mean another famine year come winter. The previous one had already strained their relationship to tatters, it would never survive another winter like that.

“I believe that would be a wise course of action, in addition to physical labor assistance in the farming sector.”

Stellaria said nothing, but Caress did not look particularly impressed. “If we’re discussing agreements, what about the alcohol trade from Gethsemene which was halted due to inability to use the Sundew Falls as a port area with the astral having overtaken House Perihelion?”

“You’ll forgive me my skepticism, but have a single one of your districts’ clients has gone thirsty during this problem?”

Caress smiled and crossed her massive legs. “Of course not. But that is just the trouble. With Noon Point closed, merchants that didn’t funnel over to Feldspar have been watching the situation from Bramble Step. It is an entertainment district, not designed to hold thousands of squatters on a long-term basis. While they have paid well to drink my good wine, a low stock of rare drink is not an easy stock to replace.”

Saber coughed and leaned earnestly forward. “How could a woman with your funds and influence want for anything, especially given proximity to the Tangled Wood?

Saber’s well-known mild temperament spared him her more aggressive one. She knew without thought that he wasn’t trying to accuse or challenge her and answered him just as politely as he’d asked. “Darling, you’ve been dealing with practical and straightforward money concerns on Horizon’s Landing too long. No one buys alcohol like five hundred merchant caravans trading information in the absence of ability to set up shop and go about normal business. They have been ‘investing’ quite heavily in one another and in my richer patrons and that means my most wastelessly exotic alcohols are in the red.”

“Surely some of the merchants squatting there must have what you’re begging for,” Stellaria grumbled.

Caress took a deep breath. “Stellaria, my dear, your brain has been addled by Titi you thinks those merchants aren’t trying to charge me the highest mark-up they think they can get away with without insulting me.”

“Settle down,” Rebis said absently. She nodded to Azricai, who had been busily scribing the minutes of their days-long Tribunal due to Samhradh’s sulkiness. “I’m sure Gethsemene will have a mouthful to say about being off-shored since Wavecrest with a full cargo and an unpaid crew. Make a note—“

Rubranova yanked Rebis’ chair back and Nayvadius leaped forward, sword out and shield raised to deflect a strike.

Above him, the Umbra Wolf grinned in her feverish way. “Nice to see you’re in good health!”

“Same fi you,” said Nayvadius with his own grin, pushing her back. “Nah hard feeling, yuh? Me bed ah empty space fi fit you still.”

She swung her sickle casually at the far edge of the hall and flicked her tongue. “I mean if you’re inviting me, what’s the point if there’s no hard feelings~?”

“Stop flirting!”

The words didn’t come from Rebis. She was well past trying to force those two to be court-appropriate.

It came from Titi, who stormed in with Pistis and Phi.

Caress made a strangled noise and covered her mouth. “Oh my darling--!” She bolted from her seat. Pistis stepped deftly in the way of Titi-tet, seemingly unaware that Caress was running toward her.

She cupped Pistis’ thin face. “Dear heart you’re a mess! That brat has done you no good.”

Pistis gave a wan smile. “You’re being so dramatic, Caress. You sound like Generous. I’ve been fine and Titi has been a delight. I wish you had come to see me, you would love her.”

“I don’t want her!” Titi hissed, shoving Pistis and trying to no avail at all to shove Caress.

Even in her glamour, Caress was not a shovable woman, and looked down her nose at the shameless but pitiful attempt. She could crush Titi beneath her heel, but that wasn’t the plan.

“Move along you little terror or I will have Carnelian beat you with your own antlers.”

Half incensed, half terrified, Titi skittered away toward Rebis muttering something quite impolite about shadow dragons. “What are you doing here?”

“Running my clan,” Rebis said, laying a staying hand on Rubranova and re-settling into her chair. “Is there something you need?”

Titi squinted. Her mouth hung slightly agape at the strange calm in the room. She barely remembered Rebis, but this was not what she recalled. The person in her memories had been rightly crying in the dirt.

“I killed you,” she sputtered.

“You tried, yes.”

Bestealcian guffawed loudly. Titi shot her a dirty look and snorted in Rebis’ direction. “You can’t just come back. You lost! You’re supposed to stay dead!”

Rebis scooted back up to the table, glanced at the next order of business, and scrunched her nose. House Xanna was interested in receiving a report on the astral. ‘Report’ for them meant sending dragons who were involved to have their memories added to the Library. She’d have told them to eat dirt on principle, but they were offering payment. Very attractive payment, in fact.

“We’re in the middle of a Tribunal meeting,” she said, pre-occupied with just what that exchange might look like. “If you want an audience, it will have to wait. What was it I was saying before…? Ah yes, Azricai make a note to arrange a meeting including Caress, Gethsemene, myself, and the managers of all the primary liquor distributors in the territory.”

“As you say, your Majesty.”

“Stop it.” Titi snarled, her body going bright with a gathering light. “Stop Ignoring Me.”

It was high noon. As predicted, Titi had come at the height of her power.

She emitted a wave of light that was almost liquid. Stellaria and Samhradh wrestled with their bonds, suddenly agitated and nearing hysterical. The Tribunes looked away, but as the light waves washed over them they struggled against a rising compunction to look Titi’s way. To know her. To worship her. To play with her.

At the far end of the table, Rebis spoke: “Envision.”

She didn’t need the words any more than she needed her focus, but she wielded both. The pink ring around her eyes was consumed by the light of her vast magical power, and the high ceiling of the Hall filled with gilded shapes. Every eye was drawn up—away from Titi and to the shape that Rebis was weaving into reality above them. The form of it was near-impossible to make out, obscured in brighter and brighter light the longer Rebis focused.

The wings of a locust wrought in gold opened and Titi cries out in horror.

“YOU CAN’T DO THAT, YOU CAN’T—“

The envisioning of Lightweaver uttered a sharp and silencing howl. It did not speak. It was not truly her, but it was every bit as powerful as Rebis believed Her to be. Rebis’ capacity was greater than even Lutia’s, and her power was young and vital and near-infinite with the rising of Light and the recent blessing of the true Lightweaver. At that particular moment in time, during that particular alignment of events, that belief was not misplaced.

The light drew in, focusing on the astral with searing intensity.

Titi-tet was from a plane much closer to the gods—the astrals could perhaps even become as gods given enough millennia. But Titi had not had millennia. It has had a mere 2 cycles in Sornieth’s time since the Seat was moved and the Stones had gone to seed. There was not enough Light in her entire being to out-shine the envisioning, even though it was a mere copy. As the light grew sharper and brighter she was forced to look away and her body began to burn under the radiance.

Phi stepped in the way of the light to shield her, and Titi fled into a ray of noon sun filtering from the ceiling windows.

Caress stomped down a heavy heel. “Assombrissais.”

The panes of light magic that made the windows dulled and went black, revealing Titi’s fluttering shape as they shut the sunlight out.

Titi roared with aggravation. The shadow magic was infuriatingly simple. It had to be—Caress did not have any particular magical aptitude. But she was very well versed at making it exactly as dark as she liked with only a few carefully placed runes and a whispered word.

It was why Rebis had called her.

“Kill her, KILL HER!”

Saber moved from his chair to Phi with the lithe speed of an expertly cracked whip and pinned him to the floor. Pistis glanced nervously at Caress, who pushed her gently back to protect her from Bestealcian’s wildly swung sickle.

A wildclaw’s foot clamped over the coatl’s face, dragging her back and tossing her against the far wall. The Smoke Gyre splayed his wings wide and tilted his head at his student. “Sloppy, Umbra Wolf. I hope you’re prepared to be disciplined when this is all over.”

Beastealcian’s crest rattled, revealing her where she slithered along the stone arches. “I mean I have a date already but if you threaten me with a good time like that…”

A sizzling arcane bolt bigger than she was and quick as a shooting start collided with her and she fell like pigeon downed by an expert arrow.  

Arcanus stood before the entry pillars, his glamour shed and his vast wings blotting out the light. A snort released a small gust of ozone-scented magic, and a shield raised behind him.

Unless she wanted to try bulldozing through him and the wall of his magic, Titi was trapped.

Rebis climbed light-footedly onto the surface of the table and stepped just as lightly down on the other side with Rubranova’s hand to steady her. The apparition of the Lightweaver made of her thesis spell dissipated into strands of light that encircled Titi and hauled her to the floor.

Gold tears fell from the astral’s faceted eyes like honey from a hive, but any sympathy was held at bay by the otherworldly snarl twisting her muzzle. That was not a face a dragon could make. The creature beneath was beginning to show.

“I have been told that you can stay here,” Rebis said slowly. “If you relinquish your power.”

“Why would I stay here?” Titi sniveled. “You hate me! You’ve been awful to me and I didn’t even do anything! I wanna go home!”

“You will. But even though I brought you into this world, you still have to stay and pay for your crimes.”

“Wh-what?”

Rebis held a hand out to Azricai, and received the scrolls. One was Lutia’s coveted spellscroll, which radiated enough Arcane magic to make the astral squirm and wretch on the floor. Rebis, safe beneath her white celestine crown, felt nothing. “Titi-tet the 15th, Astral of the Light on High, I sever you from the noon sun and bind you to Sornieth.”

The name of the astral glowed white-hot on the scroll, and in Rebis’ other hand, an unfamiliar breed change scroll opened.

“You can’t,” she hissed, and her voice was no longer that of a hatchling. “You cannot hope to bind me to paltry dragonhood!”

“Yes, that only seems to work for the astrals who let go of their power willingly. So we decided to go with something different.”

Rebis tossed the scroll.

Titi screamed as it coile around her. She was not truly a creature of flesh, so there was no true becoming. The pain came from being given true form, one that had to come into being rather than being altered to the magic of the scroll.

Soon the task was done and silence took over the hall.

Pistis made a sickly sound and Caress held her as she wept. Phi groaned. Stellaria struggled against her bonds with fresh fervor, and Ashes rushed to free her. Though they had grown apart since he laid down Willow’s memento, she flung herself into his arms and clutched him with feeble desperation he had never seen from her before.

Titi, weak and mortal and changed to a breed that had no connection to the Light, weakly craned her head up.

“What did…you do to me…?”

“I gave you the shape of Icewarden’s firstborn. Proto-tundras, I am to understand. What more apt prison for an extraplanar being could there be than the body of a gaoler?”

“Why…? Why not just…send me…back?”

“Because you nearly killed the queen, stole the livelihood of an entire region, and broke most if not all of our magic-related laws,” Azricai said matter-of-factually. “You have crimes to answer for.”

“...That..that’s all...?”

“It is,” Rebis said, dispelling her magic and moving to untie Samhradh, who was frothing with the need to get the story written down. “It’s simple, we know. But this is the Analemma Dominions, once Aphaster as ruled by Telos the Indomitable, who raised it from the ashes the children of Clan Shard.”

“And in this clan, even the gods will be made to abide by the law.”

[shardclan]

A Moment in the Summerlands

High noon rises and finds Analemma in silence. Noon Point stands empty, the merchants warned away, and the residents taking shelter in their homes. The eternal scent of steaming milk from the Happy Harpy Creamery, the one constant through even the darkest depths of winter, is absent.

Rebis stares down at the figure of Malu, sedated and physically restrained to the infirmary bed. Dust is at he side. She has left him only infrequently since bringing him there. Both share the same grim expression. Both are awaiting the inevitable.

"Enamor," Lavi had explained. "The single most basic skill in the entirety of light magic. A brief skill of captivation, something to make your enemy forget to speak their spell. It goes ignored a lot. But here we are, with an astral who has effectively taken it to the outer limits. To enthrallment."

Even Ashlesha had been too afraid to stay. His words blurted and near-panicked, were still fresh in Rebis' mind: 

"I brought us here as soon as I realized Titi-tet was here, because Lavi loves you, and I promised I'd be better and I'd care more and think about these things, but I have thought about it and in this case warning you and then leaving and locking the door behind us is best thing for everyone. I'm sorry I can't find it, it's--disseminating itself in the light, to me it feels like Titi-tet is everywhere, and it's too dangerous for me to stay here because she WILL come to you. It's her nature, she has be observed, she has to be worshiped, and if I end up enthralled I'm liable to erase everything you have built here for fun and you have maybe two people in the entire territory who could even begin to stop me, so please, please forgive me and let me take Lavi back to Horizon's Landing. Let us LEAVE."

Rebis didn't see Ashlesha very often, but his behavior was quite different. When they met, he had been unaffected and only interested in Invigilavi. To think he would beg her to allow him anything still weighs on her. Something is...amiss with him. But maybe that is only because he is human.

Malu opens his eyes. He looks around, and does not see the astral that has enthralled him. He shivers, and struggles, and soon begins to cry. His sobs are a rough and unfamiliar croak.

Dust presses a cool hand to his forehead and offers soothing but unheeded whispers. Titi-tet took his will, but they already know that can be returned. 

The same is not certain for his voice.

In the main office of the Tahalil Infirmary, Alala watches gravely as her mother flips back to the first page of a report from Noon Point's practice for third time. The symptoms. The names. The proposal written with complete impartiality at the bottom.

Haematica taps her pragmatically short nails with increasing disquiet atop her desk. The report is stirring memories old and rancid as bad wine. With lethal sharpness, she recalls the small practice she had with Tungsten on the edge of the Starwood Spa. She recalls the sharp rise in disassociative episodes before it all went wrong.

She hadn't been able to figure out what it meant, or why it was happening at the time. She had even disclosed that information to Dantalion. But none of them had been able to figure out the source. None of them had been able to stop Opal, or even identify him as the source of the problem, until their homes were in ruin.

She looks up into Alala's eyes. They both know Haematica had her first children to give the clan more plaguelings in a time when she was the only one who knew what it meant to survive. But she has never shared the stories of what the Exodus was like for her.

She cannot articulate the gravity of carrying Copernicus' mother out of the badlands on her back because the bogsneak didn't want to be cremated. Of thanking Carnelian for letting her give up on Ismene to focus on those with better chances. Of working through the night until her fingers were raw and gnarled and still having to watch Tawny set fire to the bodies of three imperials while they all held their breath and prayed that an emperor wouldn't be born.

The last thing Haematica wants is for the past to repeat itself for Alala. She places their family's seal on the letter and rolls it back up, and again she meets her daughter's eyes.

"Alala." Her voice comes out quietly, but with a maternal edge that makes the younger skydancer sit just a bit straighter. "You're also anxious."

"So are you, mother." Alala gives a weak smile. "But I think you are worried about your children, and I am worried about mine."

Haematica frowns. Alala and Rubedo's nests have an unfortunate tendency to precede ill happenings, and this time they have one lone egg to protect. She stands and fiercely embraces her daughter, mother to mother, before pressing the scroll into her hands.

"I would like it if you and Rubedo would take the egg and go stay with Asura for awhile. Maybe take Eshe, she hasn't spent much time in Feldspar."

"I think that's a good idea...for Rubedo, Eshe, and our egg." Alala peers down at the scroll in her hands. Though it is only parchment, it weighs the world. "As the Tribune of Health, I can't leave. Not now."

Haematica nods. "I know. Whenever you need me, blood of my heart, I'm here. Go. You have a lot to do if you're going to quarantine House Perihelion."

Camellia stands alone under the arcade that connects the Foursong Nursery to House Perihelion. Shrouded in layers of black silk and chiffon, with a single golden egg cradled in her arms, she stands out among the marble like the shadow of death in paradise.

When Haematica asked her to retrieve the egg holding their next grandchild, she did not ask why. They were old, dear friends, and Camellia trusted there must have been a reason.

She can feel this reason in the air around her. House Perihelion does not outwardly look different. Glamours wandering through idyllic scenery without any sense of rush or bustle is normal. House Perihelion has no businesses; it is all residences and gardens and skylights into public halls where river waters had been diverted into bubbling streams and mirror-still meditation pools.

But she feels eyes on her. Innumerable irregular clicks of bitten nails and the vibrations of jittery legs resonate in her horns.

Generous spots her and walks to her with friendly, animated haste. "Camellia~!" he sings. "My necro-chic darling, it's been too long!"

While they are familiar, even friendly in the right atmospheres, he has never been one to be touchy with her. Yet he throws his arms around her as though they are the best of friends.  

"Big smile dear," he whispers urgently. "Something isn't right and I don't think we're safe."

Camellia immediately responds with her most winning smile and throws one arm around him. "You know how it is Generous, I am always at the spans and you are always at the spa. Do you have a moment to walk with me? I'm on a granny errand."

"Granny?" He looks to the egg, and for a moment his eyes light with genuine joy, before he remembers the situation they are in. "O-oh. Oh dear. Uhm, yes--yes, of course! Let's catch up!"

Generous keeps a protective hold of her shoulders the whole way out. It isn't until they are well beyond the borders that he and Camellia relax and begin to exchange information.

Titi-tet sits in the lap of luxury.

The game of hide and seek is over, and the residents of House Perihelion have all had their time to see her--living wonder that she is.  She doesn't really know all their names yet, and it doesn't really matter. She doesn't need to know any of them when Pistis knows all of them. Pistis knows the good ones, and the bad ones, which ones will help most with getting Malu back, and which ones Titi should avoid being seen by.

Titi would have loved to have the guardian named Prophecy. She was old, she knew cool magic, and could have definitely been of use. But Pistis warned that Prophecy was perhaps too accomplished at light magic. She would know if Titi was bending light, and would probably not be easy to make a friend of. On the other hand, Titi would never ever have bothered with Dalma beyond her personal fancy. He was just some boring tundra man, not a special or interesting thing about him by appearances. But apparently he was the Queen's Historian.

"A queen..." Titi murmurs with growing indignance. She kicks over a bowl of fruit. "Hmph, I can be a better queen than some dumb fae... What's an Arcanite even doing running a light clan?"

"She's lightborn," Miscedence clarifies simply. "She is called 'Rebis the Rose-Eyed' because she was poisoned with Arcane magic in a magical mishap. Rebis is many things, but she cannot be called a particularly healthy or hardy queen."

"How's she manage to stay alive? Arcane energy is so gross!"

"A crown of white celestine," Stellaria answers. "It keeps her from getting too sick by siphoning the Arcane energy from her body. It's fine for her, but white celestine is lethal to Arcanites."

"I want that!" Titi-tet said, practically bouncing on her paws. "Can I have it?"

Verbena smiles, and pats Titi's head. "I'm sure we can get Ranti to make you one."

"No! She'll make one that's not as nice because I'm not a princess; I want the queen's crown!"

Verbena, Stellaria and Miscidence look at each other, but they chave nothing to offer. They look to Dalma, who looks to Laleh and Primsy, and they both turn their gaze to Moyo.

"I am not my sister," he reminds with a smile. "But the little diamond deserves a diamond in turn. It is simple, who can retrieve the queen's crown? Surely, the Tribunes must have this access?"

Miscidence quickly shakes his head. "If we touched the crown while it rested on Rebis' head, Bestealcian would take our hands before we could take a step."

"But I want it!" Titi insists. "Phi can't you just magic it off or something?"

"My magic doesn't do that..."

"Well it's quite simple then," Pistis chimes. "If Titi wants the crown, all we have to do is take Titi to see the Tahalil knight. When we explain to her that Titi would like Rebis' crown, I'm sure she'll be able to make it work."

Titi shines brighter than ever. She throws herself into Pistis’ arms, showering her with affection, completely unaware of the envious gazes of her other friends. 

If asked, Titi would probably not even remember Malu’s name.

[shardclan]

Despite the quarantine of House Perihelion and the confirmed presence of an astral in Aphaster City, an appropriate state of mind was a difficult commodity for the Rose Gold Queen to come by.

Arcanus had returned to keep watch over her. Not only was Nayvadius out of her hair while he took up Arcanus’ tasks across the territories, but the armor meant to protect him from the effects of Rebis’ crown had been released for use.  It was still only a prototype, of course. One that needed extensive testing. And what better test was there than for Arcanus to always be within reach of her?

Rebis knew she was queen of a clan in danger. Important members of the community were missing, her people were hungry and frightened, and the field work was delayed. On Ashlesha’s word, the astral they were dealing with would not act after dark, but night-tilling was not an easy undertaking.

Yet these concerns offered her little resistance to Arcanus’ attentive gaze, and she struggled to appear calm when humbly offered his arm. Each time, her fins betrayed her and she blurted that she was afraid the would hurt him. It wasn’t technically a lie–if the armor failed, the crown was enough white celestine to kill him in minutes. 

She reminded herself constantly that it was childish to get so flustered over nothing. She was an adult now, but the gap in their experience was so big she might as well have still been a child. There was nothing there; he was just caring for his charge.

Her frills twisted almost painfully, and she snatched her pillow and crammed it down against her face. Prophecy had warned her to find a more realistic first love; something that would be kinder on her. And she had tried! Arcanus had been the furthest thing from her mind all winter. But all her efforts had been undone by his lowered eyes and the slip of his hair over his broad shoulders as he knelt and promised to protect her. 

In spite of it all, it was still spring.

“Someone’s lively today,” Rubranova remarked.

“Quiet,” Rebis grumbled.

Rubranova gently pulled the pillow back and tucked it back behind Rebis’ head. “You’re usually asleep by now, my lady. Something on your mind?”

“No, no, it’s nothing! I’m just a little restless; cabin fever, nothing serious.”

“Uh huh… Well, your unconvincing white lies aside, please get some rest. The lume daffodils are coming in in the garden if you wanna get some fresh air tomorrow.”

Rubranova returned to her place at the windowsill, where she always sat until Rebis fell asleep.

Rebis sighed. She hadn’t pieced out how to not feel like a child with Rubranova despite being the older between them. It didn’t nag her the way it used to–or it hadn’t until Arcanus had come back. Rubranova was her knight but she was also akin to her personal physician. The feeling of being a child–a well cared for one, Rebis admitted–was only a side effect of Rubranova’s bedside manner.

She turned over onto her side and stared slightly to the left of the door. As soon as she was asleep, Rubranova would leave and Arcanus would keep first watch in that exact spot. Her face flushed with the dozen reasons why he might enter her room. He never did–he said it wasn’t proper to enter a woman’s bedroom. which was just more food for an already out of control fire. Every night was like this since he had come back, it was a wonder she got any sleep at all. 

She clenched her eyes shut and pretended to be someone who wasn’t quite so hopeless.

And something changed.

A wheeze from her own chest brought Rebis stumbling into the high noon sunlight in the middle of the courtyard. She was reaching out to figures under the arcade, but her legs entangled before her blurry vision could figure out who she was looking at. Her feet caught her nightgown, and she crashed into a sprouting patch of daffodils.

Her chest was filled with a breath-stealing static, as though her blood simmered in the chambers of her heart. She reached frantically into her hair and raked her unsteady hands through the new grass, but it wasn’t there.

“My crown…” she croaked.

She couldn’t remember how she got to the garden. She couldn’t remember the morning. Which had to mean–

Her eyes clenched shut as the pain in her chest intensified, and she loosed a reedy, agonized wail. Someone cried out her name, and an unfamiliar laughter chased Rebis down into sinking red unconsciousness.

Rebis awakened with a gasp. She was still in her bed, and dawn was just beginning to trace its rosy light across her ceiling. A film of oily sweat slicked her body, and she sat up only to be greeted by a throbbing headache. Her fingers reflexively touched for her forehead, and found it empty.

Her crown.  

Her hands were steady again, but they tingled as she groped her pillows and sheets with fading hope that she might find it. She crept out of bed and to her mirror. Her eyes were already tinging a deep pink at their edges; the crown had to have been gone for hours. Her chest heaved, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to keep from sobbing aloud. She breathed in short, rapid bursts, wiping her eyes frantically. She clasped She whirled to look at her room, her eyes darting around the small space.  Without the crown, she could not even count on the hours between now and the afternoon.

“Okay,” she mouthed to herself, not willing to risk even a whisper as she put on every article of common celestine jewelry she had. It would buy her some time, at least. “Okay. I’m okay.”

Nothing was disturbed. Not the contents of her nightstand, the pearls on her vanity, or the silks inside her wardrobe. Someone had come in while she slept and taken her crown and only her crown, and they hadn’t disturbed any of the wards.  

Rubranova, Arcanus, and Bestealcian were the only ones who could come and go that freely. One of them–gods, she hoped it was only one–must have encountered the astral. The memory of the courtyard lacked context, but the sounds… A clash of metal, and laughing, and someone calling out to her–a woman’s voice. But she was in so much pain she couldn’t make sense of whether the voice was Bestealcian or Rubranova.

Arcanus, she thought suddenly. He could interact with her, but he couldn’t possibly have kept direct contact with the crown long enough to take it anywhere. And Rubranova always checked on her when she came back for morning watch. She would have noticed the crown was gone if he had done it.

She ran to the door and flung it open, but it was Rubranova who stood guard. Their eyes met only briefly before Rebis panicked and slammed it shut again.

“My lady?” the knight called. The handle rattled. “Rebis?!”

Rebis clenched her eyes shut, and begged to be taken anywhere, anywhen but then and there. The door thumped at her back with increasing urgency. Her condition hadn’t deteriorated enough yet to intentionally court a temporal desynchronization. The only option left was the light of her window.

The knight throwing her body against the door shoved Rebis forward, and she stumbled into a run. Behind her, the wood rattled, splintered, and finally exploded under Rubranova’s barrage just as Rebis threw herself into the sunlight.

The drop wasn’t long, but Rebis had never been athletic. There was no grass to soften her graceless landing, and even if she hadn’t knocked the wind out of herself, there was nowhere to go. Rubranova was lightborn, but she was still a Tahalil and a knight. The drop wasn’t going to slow her down.

Rebis sucked in breath and curled in close to the cool marble with a hasty whisper: “Verbluffen!”

Rubranova landed almost on top of her, but the spell had already done its work. Had she looked closely, the guardian would have seen the slight distortion where light bent unnaturally to shield Rebis’ body from sight. However, she wasn’t in the calmest state after seeing her queen leap out a window first thing in the morning. After a moment, she swore and took off at a lope, calling for Bestealcian.

Rebis remained still, and took only the shallowest sips of breath. When she was sure she was alone, she pressed her back to the wall and stood. As long as she moved slowly, the spell would hold.

She had to find Arcanus.

[shardclan]

Under the great obsidian disc was an air of keen agitation that was so potent it was almost a solid object. Though it was unclear just what the source was, locals gave it wide berth.

Even Lutia stood in the outer rings of the columns, glaring out into the light of day with raised hackles. Constant unease was a struggle she had dealt with ever since returning from the Circle with Apokathisto. She was the Steward of the Seat, and that was certainly safe, but the stones that comprised the Circle were the power source. It might take an Age, but eventually the Seat would run dry of its power without them.

(And if she was honest, it irked her a little that the young guardian had formed some sort of connection with the Circle that even she was not fully privy to.)

None of that was what bothered her now. This was the kind of irate foreboding that she usually only experienced when Crucis had tampered with something he really shouldn't have. But it wasn't Crucis. It didn't feel like him, didn't smell like him. And the unfamiliarity of it only set her on edge more.

Apokathisto was either very brave or very desperate to have approached her.

"Something you need, Imperator?" 

“Invigilavi,” he corrected numbly. He had heard that word spoken with scorn many times since the paper announced it. At this point, it was all he could do to just direct his clan mates to his new name instead of drawing attention to his eventual title.

“Lavi it is,” the Archmage said distractedly. “Can I help you?”

He awkwardly joined her under the disc. His shape was still new to him and he couldn't change or remove the glamour. No one else in Aphaster barring transient mercenaries took such half-beast shapes. Yet he still had his characteristic air of reticence, despite a standing several heads taller than Lutia and having significantly more bulk.

"I would like to confide in you," he began. "If you don't mind."

Lutia gawked. No one had confided much of anything in her in eons. "Do I really seem the appropriate choice for that? You have the Gale Wolf for a mother!"

His face pinched. "It's because she's my mother that I don't want this to reach her. Perhaps it oversteps my boundaries but... I am coming to you because of your experiences. With your son."

Lutia's face froze into a mask, but her coat nearly doubled in size. The ghosts of ancient scents toyed with her sensitive nose, like a forgotten perfume with a thousand attached memories half-remembered.

"I know how you were raised, Lavi. I know you wouldn't bring that up on passing curiosity." Her voice was at once stonily meditative, as though she were talking herself out of her anger, and subtly cold with a fear he hadn't thought possible from her. 

"Can you be saved?" she whispered.

The question caught him off guard. He had been raised on the stories of the past, of how Lutia's rage had razed everything they used to be and chased them from their homeland. But hearing the slight quake of her voice and seeing the tight expression on her face, he knew he was treading into a place in her heart that wasn't full of anger but of old loss and barely healed devastation.

"I don't know," he answered quietly. "I suppose I'm telling you because I'm hoping you might find a way to make the answer into a yes before it's too late."

He held out his palm, displaying a small golden crack in his flesh. Lutia traced it quizzically. It wasn't opalescence, though it bore a resemblance. It was more like a scar, but the magical nature of it was obvious. The gold color confused her. Numb to his magic or not, he was Arcane.

"Is this a new gene?" she demanded. "Something expressing after your contact with the Circle?"

He laughed dryly. "I don't think so. This is..." He frowned, and let his hand drop from hers. "My magic isn't numb, Lutia. It's not inside of me any more. It's been displaced."

"Ashes didn't find anything of the sort wrong with you!" she countered hastily. "You have magic, you just cant feel it."

"Because it isn't mine. That's why I can't feel it, or command it. Not even to change this body. The Circle took my magic from me, and left something else. Something that lets me feel them...forming out there."

He rubbed his scaly fingers over the crack, feeling the almost metallic sensation of whatever had solidified in it. "The magic inside me belongs to the Circle. To Abankhit, in particular."

"Who the hell is Abankhit?"

"The name of the stone I touched. You have their names on your scroll. Abankhit would be the last." His eyes turned away, more out of frustration than avoidance. "I have a lot in my mind recently, Lutia. Knowledge that doesn't belong to me. But it's like the knowing you experience in a dream. It's an understanding that doesn't make sense in the waking world. I only know for certain I am charged to see Abankhit and all the rest back among the stars."

Lutia stared ahead, worried immensely at that not one but a full three dozen unstable astrals were working on manifesting into Sornieth. "And when you complete this mission, it will save Rebis somehow...But cost you your life a well?"

"It is not the completion may kill me.” He smiled bitterly at the crack in his palm. "Just like the Radiant could not house his essence in a body that wasn't his, my body isn't going to last forever on Abankhit's energy. It's astral magic. Horizon was born as he was and had both energies in equal measure. I was born a dragon, and was never meant to exist with anything but a dragon’s magic in me."

She remembered with painful vividness how hard it had been for both Horizon and herself. Day in, day out, meditating and controlling themselves at the risk of sublimating to another plane. What Lavi was describing was worse. He wasn't at risk of going on to some glorious other form of life. He was going to deteriorate and he couldn't even take refuge in exaltation because he wasn't whole without his birth magic inside of him.

"We can do the opposite of what Rebis is doing," she insisted fumblingly. "Magic infusion is just as routine as siphoning. A pain in the ass but you could live if the problem is not getting enough draconic magic."

His jaw clenched. He was almost grateful when the soft blue-white light under the disc took on a harsh magenta color. The Celestial Vault screeched and groaned and the crystal shot outward in brittle, hastily formed masses of unstable geometry, cracking and breaking only to be replaced be even more poorly generated spires of celestine. The multi-layered barriers of elements that rose over arcane hissed, and it wasn't long before Lutia doubled over, claws digging at the Arcanist's emblem blazed into her abdomen.

"It's burning!" she gasped raggedly. Her fur and the cracks of her opalescence glistened in angry pink neon, the focuses lining her limbs sizzling white hot. Even the spellscroll around her neck was shining with ferocious intensity. "Get back! Something's wrong, the Seat writhes--!"

Without flinching, Invigilavi reached out and placed his hand over her emblem. There was a faint hiss as the magic singed his scales, but the focuses quieted. Her fur settled back to its usual plain charcoal. The surge passed. He breathed a cloud of stardust that nearly pushed Lutia to vomit, but unlike Horizon, he did not seem otherwise harmed.

"You're..." she fumbled, her eyes widening with her rising horror. "You're immune...?"

He nodded grimly. In his hand, the crack had grown, tracing a curving golden leyline from thumb to wrist. He had siphoned away her magic, to seemingly no other detriment at all. No signs of inundation sickness--not even the drunken giddiness that accompanied exposure to high levels of one’s home element. 

But the booming of the earth barrier collapsing left neither of them the time to fully appreciate the trust he had just placed in her, nor the magnitude of what he had just done, nor the implications of the enlarged crack in his palm.

"You're the Steward," he said firmly. "Control it."

The words brought her agitation back in full force. The Seat was reacting to something. As much as she hated to think that it had a mind of it's own, it was confused and angry. For just a moment,  something had caused a ripple in the connection between it and Lutia. And while it's only goal had been to find her, left to its own self-expression it was only good at expelling raw energy.

Lutia put it back to sleep with the certain promise that she was would certainly raze something when she found out who was responsible.

@boyonetta

[shardclan]

There was a hush over the clan. An awaiting stillness for the changes that would sweep through during the coming days. Lightweaver would not allow the coronation of Aphaster's new queen during Starfall given the old allegiances being what they were, and Telos wanted to pass the crown personally. So Rebis was to be coronated before Starfall, before the Arcanist's power swelled and before Telos departed soon after. 

Though Lutia felt well outside these concerns, she wasn’t unaffected. Immense power and dangerous artifact of untold Arcane power at her disposal aside, there was little she could do about political and social upheaval. She wasn't above the irony of it, but she didn't want things to change. The one that brought them to the Ruins had been enough. She didn’t think she deserved much, but she knew she deserved stability; they all did. 

But in the same way, Telos deserved to go back to her family.  

Lutia herself was thinking about how feasible it was for her to go back to the fatherland with Lavi. Her heart might crave stability, but her Arcane blood was equally desperate for new and interesting experiences. There were no curiosities to be explored without change, and quite a few of the studious Arcanites in Aphaster were suddenly bored out of their minds. Ashes hadn't made a sigil in weeks. He lounged around his labs, dozed off at meetings, and generally flopped around like a sad eel. Even the miraculous case of Rubranova's celestine-forming opalescence hadn't managed to stir him out of his funk, but Lavi--ah, Lavi. 

Invigilavi's case was secret, dire, and might very well kill him--the most Arcane thing that had happened since the moving of the Seat. 

Lutia's back prickled with the sensation of something unexpected passing through the Starwood Portal. She stood up with a tired snort of annoyance, but her nose quickly caught a scent that gave her pause. Suddenly, she was little more than a calf in company of her travel-hungry older sister.

 She trotted to the end of a jutting spire of celestine and barked out. "Why fi come, bredrin? Nuh stars worth a gaze here!"

From the dimly lit path, a male voice responded. "You nuh know me; winter coat make tundra bold wit strangers?"

"Me nose would nah miss nuh North Isler."

"You nuh one of us, you ah rusty, rusty tongue. Gwan and spare me." 

He stepped close enough into the glow of the vault for her to see him. A gnarly sort for a skydancer, all violet and covered in skeletal markings, probably around Lutia's age, and noticeably lacking his antennae. But he was smiling with the disarming and dangerous charm Lutia recalled from his kind. North Islers lived on the Crystalspines furthest to the northwest of the territory--particularly a chain which marked the boundary between the Isles and the wilds of the Greater Ocean. They rarely ever interacted with clans from the mainland. The dragons there were Old World Arcanites--as unpredictable and ruthless as they were curious and sagely.

Of course, Safiri knew them well, and so had the Cosmopolitan. Lutia had been a mere visitor compared to them.

"I meant no offense," she said politely, grinning with nostalgia. "I haven't smelled the air of the north since I was young."

"Good thing me nuh take none," he said amicably."Where me go fi meet wit yuh fae queen?"

Lutia paused and stepped carefully into the path, blocking his way further into House Betelgeuse. "You're asking that and you haven't given your name?"

"Yah yell out 'fore we can make introduction, Archmage Lutia." He reached slowly into his mantle and held out an emblem that smelled strongly of Arcanus. "Name’s Nayvadius. Circuitdrake come, ask fi champion to safeguard a queen who wear the old celestine."

Lutia peered into his eyes--North islers didn't accept non-Arcanites living among them, but she had to assure herself he was elemental kin after hearing something so outrageous. "What kind of Arcanite are you that you would intentionally approach white celestine?"

He smiled lazily. "Nor' Isler."

"I like him~"

Nayvadius looked up, peering coolly into the shadow in search of the elusive source of Bestealcian's voice. "Nuh spread secrets 'round, but I like she too."

"Only because you haven't met her," Telos assured, ignoring the dramatically indignant huff from the rafters and rolling the golden emblem around in her fingers. "How was Arcanus? He had to take the long way to the Isles, so we haven't seen him in eons."

Nayvadius shrugged. "As drakes are, so wah him." 

Lutia glanced at Rebis, whose eyes were glazing. "He says he was fine."

"Just so."

Rebis sat up, and tried not to look embarrassed. She had heard dozens of accents in Telos' court, and become familiar with most of them, but she was terrible with new ones. "You're nothing like Arcanus, why would you want to be a knight?"

"Nah here fi wear armor nor march round wit face wah make hatchy cry. Am champion--special one here fi protect one wha've special needs." He dipped his head, eyeing Rebis' jewels. "Arcanus may be knight yuh, but all circuitdrake come ah Nor' Isles enough time back dem. Him nah put ting he truly care for in hands him nuh can trust."

"It would be easy to have a knight from some other element serve Rebis," Lutia clarified. "But Arcanus is a loyalist Arcanite like my father is. He wouldn't put Rebis into Non-Arcane hands even with her sickness taken into account."

Telos raised a brow at their visitor. "And your hands are trustworthy, are they Nayvadius?" 

"Aye." He glanced just behind Telos, where Bestealcian had materialized. She flicked her crest at him and he winked lazily back at her. "Nuh promises fi you though, notty business."

"If I can convince you to stop flirting for just a moment," Rebis remarked sourly, stretching out her own bejeweled hands. "Prove it." Nayvadius strolled up to her like it was the most natural thing in the world even as Telos and Lutia instinctively shifted away. 

White celestine was created to contain Arcane chaos even if it meant killing its denizens. None of them truly knew what had happened to make the tame, pale blue strain that was common in the isles in modern times, but old dragons who knew the tales of the early ages spoke of it like a curse. To their knowledge there was no Arcanite, from the meekest fae to the most lordly Archmage, who could not be killed just by being too close to it.

None but Nayvadius, who took Rebis' hands, and showed he had at least some decorum by bowing to press his forehead gem against them. 

Rebis gawked, and unceremoniously said the first thing that came to her mind. "...Are you wearing contacts?"

"Now why fi yah say such ting wha hurt me heart?" the skydancer teased. "Nah fledgie, me no wear contact. Me tell you all bout this--" He squeezed her hands gently. "--if you nah tell me gwan back Nor' Isles."

"I-I won't. Arcanus sent you to protect me and you clearly can. It's just..."

Nayvadius smirked at the unconscious motions of her fins. "You love him?"

Rebis went red from her chin to the tips of her fins, and snatched her hands back from him even as the others in the room struggled to contain an exposion of surprised wheezes.

"No," she grated with as much patience as she could. "I just need a proper attendant. One who can escort me places and won't say things like that."

He gave a smug hum, but didn't press her buttons again. "When yuh need knight, Arcanus come. When you need protection, me come. Simple nah?"

Rebis looked pleadingly to Telos, but the guardian was staring with casual resignation at Bestealcian and her barely controlled laughter. "Is this what dealing with the Umbra Wolf has been like for you the whole time?"

Telos pressed her lips together and Rebis couldn't tell if her expression was apologetic or amused as she nodded slowly and deliberately.

Nayvadius grinned brightly, completely ignoring the passing of long-suffering between the old and new queens. “When me start?”

[shardclan]

There was a lot that Riley already knew as she waited at Thunder's March to be cleared for passage to the mainland. That the Lightning Liaison, for example, was some love-burned old battleaxe with the sense of humor of a salt lick. That she was the one who made the rules, but her primary enforcer was Paradise, who would most certainly have remembered Riley and probably taken the opportunity to have a little power trip. Good-natured or not, a mother like Paradise wouldn't forget someone who price gouged them for information on where their seemingly kidnapped child was. 

Riley was careful to have her glamour up well before she arrived at the ugly as hell copper customs check, and even though nobody in the old clan had ever seen her glamour before, she had dressed as unlike herself as possible. Her naturally harsh, angular face and beady eyes aside, she bore almost no resemblance to the Riley that was once a part of Clan Shard. And while it was an immense annoyance to be covered in flowers and lace like some prissy grandma, it had the effect she wanted.

Like a rat released into an unsuspecting silo of the finest golden grain, Riley was granted passage into the idyllic sunlight of a perfect late summer day in the Sunbeam Ruins.

Ostensibly, her primary target was the new heir. But it would be incredibly obvious to walk in and go right for her. There'd be someone eyeing her if she came on too strong. Better to make a day trip of it. Maybe update some of her long out of date records of the old clan members and see if there was anything interesting to be sniffed out among its newer members. 

The experience wasn't without its certain kind of nostalgia. As she smoothly dodged the welcome center at Noon Point, she saw a young, blindingly blonde imperial male and knew he was one of Saber and Galbana's even before she saw him happily fussing over a luscious looking cake. Her tongue flicked in irritation; their family had never given Riley anything worth keeping note of and she had been hoping they would come away a little more damaged. Instead they had another kid that was pretty much a reflection of his surroundings.

Noon Point was bright and warm and unguarded--nothing like the foot of the Focal Point, which had been dark and easy to skulk in. Here she had to lean in to the mannerisms of a lazily curious window shopper to stay inconspicuous and watch the little things happen. She bought a bauble and some cake, munching and making notes in her book as she went:

Kea, fruits and vegetables dropped off with a pearlcatcher = too many horns and a clearly visible glow. 

Parhelia-turned-pearlcatcher = Old, already-published news

Skydancer that looks on the verge of his seventh major nervous breakdown. Mail dragon. Occult shop next door. Omen’s? 

Not enough sage/inkwells laying around.

 Cloudwhyte and Alchemilla flirting in front of the Sundial Brewery like not a godsdamn thing has changed since the day they first started throwing fuck me eyes at each other. 

Even the prison looks harmless. From the outside. 

Merchant selling weapons.  Huge inventory + small stall = few buyers.

Not a true seller. Listened too hard. Waiting for me to say some keyword. Overcharged too.

A fae with a sewing basket at his stall - something exchanged. She left the basket.

Primsy. Seamstress. Same guild as Fletch/Willowalk. Helping the weapons trade somehow?

Eventually, she had meandered to the edge of the point, well beyond the transient bazaars, to find what she was looking for. The library was tall and stately and warded like a vault. She noted uncomfortably that some soft, not particularly martial-looking serthis (by their species standards, anyway) were visible through the enormous windows on the ground floor. They were speaking with a pearlcatcher that bore an impossibly strong resemblance to a mossy cerdae.

Noisily sucking sugar off her fingers, she ambled up the steps and made her way inside and to the upper floors, padding as silently as possible. She had reliable intel that the mages in the clan were only allowed to practice their magic at the top floor, and the new queen was supposedly well on her way to becoming an archmage, so it made as much sense as anywhere else.

"Does it hurt at all?" a small voice asked.

Riley stopped, and had her notebook and pencil out in a single flick of her hands.

"It feels weird," a much bigger, scratchier voice answered. "Doesn't hurt though. Are you sure you're okay, your majesty?"

Two females, and that 'your majesty' certainly wasn't being directed at Telos. Riley peeked her head above the floorboards, and spotted the large one first. Guardian woman with cherub patterns, deeply red and incredibly messy hair, pink and blue opal. She was holding hands with a small fae girl whose age Riley couldn't quite figure out, but she was wearing a white crown that every now and again flickered with a vaguely pink facet. That would be 'her majesty', the Heiress Rebis. 

Where her hand met the guardian's, there was a deep pink stain in the coloration. But more interestingly, the opalescence was actually growing. Not spreading but jutting out in the distinct pale blue quartz formations distinct to celestine.

"We always thought my opalescence was inert," the guardian said curiously. "Guess not."

Rebis pulled her hand back, and looked thoughtfully at her own hands. "Rubranova, I can't approve of this. We don't know what effect that has on you."

"Sure we do." She reached down the spire that had growing from her forearm and with the brutish strength of a healthy young guardian, broke it off. The sound elicited a small shriek from the heiress, but Riley watched silently with a rapt and almost lustful expression, scribbling as fast as her fingers would go. 

Rubranova flexed her hand and waggled the rod of celestine at Rebis. "You shouldn't freak out like that. I'm a doctor. Or at least, I'm a doctor's daughter. Good enough. Anyway, your eyes are gold again. First time since you came back."

"That's not enough to put you ask risk," Rebis insisted.

"Sure ain't. So we're going to go to Ashes and get me re-checked. See if this is poisoning me or something. At the very least, this means I should be your aide or something. Who else is going to be able to help you in an emergency? Me being there might be the difference between life and death for you, you know?"

Rebis' fins drooped. "You don't...even know me."

"You're the next queen. And I might be able to help you in a way no one else can. Isn’t that enough?"

"You're barely grown!" the heiress cried earnestly. “Too young to be burdened with this.”

Riley watched Rubranova scratch her chin with the piece of celestine that had previously been a part of her body. She seemed more confused than offended.

"So are you."

Riley snapped her book shut and slid down the railing back to the ground floor. She couldn't believe she was lucky enough to have caught all that. A jaguar-patterned bogsneak she didn’t recognize reprimanded her at the bottom.

"A strange choice of place to use as your playground," she remarked with an imperiously raised brow. “Another place will suit your whims better, I think.”

"Sorry," Riley said with a barely contained grin. "I'm just on my way out. Can I ask you something, though? I just saw a beauty of a guardian up there. All red, kinda pinky blue opal? You know anything about her?"

"Rubranova," she answered with a slow nod. "Spare your attempts to woo her. The Tahalils are a family of beauty, but that one has no interest in romance or its pleasures."

“Tahalils?”

“The doctors,” she clarified. 

Haematica’s stock then, Riley thought with a slight needle of worry. One of Haematica’s daughters had married a son of Camellia’s. As Riley remembered it, Camellia had always mated with rarer breeds, but it wasn’t as though that was a rule. She didn’t have any rules. Rubranova might very well be Camellia’s grandchild, and with Heaven supposedly missing, that wasn’t anything she wanted to be caught dabbling in. That meant getting far, far away from Noon Point. 

She took a flight through the southeast part of the territory, admiring just how much like a crystalspine House Betelgeuse really looked. (And truthfully admiring even more that they had convinced the Lightweaver to let such an obvious Arcane structure stand so monolithic on her land. There was dirt there but even she wasn’t stupid enough to defy a deity their privacy. At least not when she wasn’t sure she could get away with it. ) She curved around, peering down at the geometrically perfect concentric columns and arcade of the Court of Five Lights. As curious as she was, that place would be full of familiar faces. And the last thing she wanted was to cross paths with Azricai. House Perihelion and the Leyline Gardens dotted the landscape in the far west, but lacked the grandeur of the central and eastern districts. With no idea where the little imperator of the clan would be, she swung north toward the Shadow border. 

Riley had wanted to visit Bramble Step since the day she first heard about it. And it didn’t disappoint her. 

The fog! The darkness! The dedication of the people to keeping their head down but their ears open! The constant whisper of secrets being exchanged! It was the closest she had ever felt to patriotism. 

“--angry you think she’ll be?”

“This close to leaving and the wedding still in the works? She’ll probably want to throttle the little asshole.”

Riley froze at the familiar voices, and melted easily into the nearest fog bank, squinting busily at her book. Her mind raced, because she thought one of those voices was Atsushi and they had been on terms of a reasonable kind once. Trading him information on where Carnelian was at any given time had once been both a great way to keep tabs on eastern sornieth’s goings on, and an even better way to piss Carnelian off. 

But far more importantly, her adrenaline was racing because she knew damn well the other voice was Carnelian himself. It didn’t make sense. Atsushi was literally everything Carnelian hated. Obsessive, two-faced, self-serving, all but blind to personal boundaries, and a necromancer on top of that. Hell, she had specifically let it slip to Atsushi that Carnelian wasn’t solely into females to make their interactions worse and Carnelian had shown up the very next day and tried to tear her horns off. And now they were chatting? Amicably? What the fuck was going on? 

Something good, the more focused part of her mind pointed out. 

“She wouldn’t do that,” Atsushi said casually. 

“Not a chance. But it would take a saint to not at least consider it. As long as Junior and Jorah are fine, she’ll accept it.” 

“I mean, they were when I left, but I felt Camellia around so they might be dead now.”

“Mmm, something happened at House Betelgeuse so Lutia went out there too.”

“...We might be able to go save them,” Atsushi teased, smirking.

Carnelian snorted, but Riley could see him grinning. “Eleven rest them and you too if you want that suicide mission.”  

 A cloud of smoke scented of sweet tobacco and fiery cindermint joined the fog, turning Riley’s stomach. His choice in smokes was still abysmal. She didn’t dare move, so she strained to hear them as they passed her by.

“So is it technically the Twelve now?”

“Nah, I don’t think so, it’s not like he’s a separate element. Maybe it explains the Arcanist’s constellation though.”

“The Emperor?”

“They don’t call it that anymore, its-- Wait, you’re into astrology?”

“Not really, but whenever Omen pens the horoscope, I pay attention.”

Riley’s mind was reeling. A twin of the Arcanist? She wouldn’t have believed it if Lutia and Camellia hadn’t also been involved. What had happened to it? Where was it now? She was filled with the kind of questions whose answers had gotten her in trouble in the past. And because she had not changed at all, she immediately chased after them. 

The click of her shoes was deafening in the fog. She hadn’t noticed at all that their passing had been entirely silent aside from their voices. They turned back to look at her rather casually. They didn’t seem bothered that they might have been overheard, or followed, but the moment Carnelian parted the fog to see what manner of idiot or lost tourist he was dealing with, he froze. 

Riley tried to look the least like herself possible, but the look on his face suggested there wasn’t a glamour or mask or choice of wardrobe in all of Sornieth that could have hidden her identity from him. So she dropped the bit and lit a cigarillo.

“You two have certainly gotten close~” she called, leering over the smoke. 

Atsushi clearly remembered her--the look of recognition at the sound of her voice was telltale--yet he wasn’t quick to be his candid self. His eyes went to Carnelian, who hadn’t moved an inch and was coolly staring her way. 

The last time they had spoken had been in front of his daughter’s burning corpse. No doubt seeing her face again was bringing back all kinds of bad memories, and she didn’t have a good grasp on what kind of man he had become after all that. He had ripped a pearlsnatcher’s wings off, sure, but that wasn’t much different from the violent imperial she had stalked in eons past. 

Finally, Carnelian gave an indifferent huff, and kept walking. “Anyway, Omen’s horoscopes have probably saved my life at least once.”

“Really?” Atsushi went after him without a second glance at Riley. “I would never have picked you for the superstitious type.”

“It’s about as superstitious as an almanac if a witch writes it.”

Riley stared after them both. Atsushi was one thing, if he had Carnelian’s attention she hardly found it odd for him to have tunnel vision. But Carnelian had just...ignored her entirely. It should have been a red flag, but she took it the way she usually did: as permission. 

She walked right up and before she could even begin to overstep her boundaries, Carnelian had her by the horns. She stared at him, feeling terror well up even as he continued to look at her with complete detachment. Almost as if he were regarding an uninteresting bug.

To yet more of her surprise, he released her entirely unharmed. Atsushi shrugged somewhat impatiently her way when she looked at him for an explanation. “Things change.”

“Enough for you two to be friends?” she spat, as skeptical as she was disgusted.

Carnelian’s brows drew together. He flicked the last of his cigar into an alley, very carefully blew the last of the smoke into Riley’s face, and leaned down to kiss Atsushi. 

Riley’s mind blanked. It was happening right in front of her, but some vital connection between the act and the implications was failing and in its absence it became as if she had accidentally happened on strangers kissing in the street. How else was she supposed to make sense of Carnelian, who could barely be caught giving his own daughter an affectionate gesture, openly kissing someone he had previously hated at least as much as he hated her--in the middle of the street no less?

It was the growl that snapped her out of it. A half-rumbled remark about Atsushi being short before Carnelian abandoned the effort of bending and scooped him up instead. And something about Atsushi’s calves crossing over Carnelian’s lower back sent a bolt through Riley that lasso’d her rapidly disassociating mind back to ground zero. 

“WH-WHA-” she stammered, making a lot of noise but very little sense.

Atsushi surfaced from whatever the fuck was happening, and she was almost glad for the familiarity of the manic look in his eyes. But it quickly took a turn into radiating menace, and he snarled at her with more force than she thought possible from someone so breathless. 

“GO. AWAY.”

At that point, having gotten far more information that she really wanted, she was more than happy to obey, and in fact obeyed her way all the way back through Thunder’s March, taking nothing but her notebook and a bottle of the stiffest alcohol she could find.

On her way out, Paradise wished her safe travels and hoped she would visit Aphaster again. 

Riley closed her eyes and got to work removing the cork. It was going to be a long trip home. 

@boyonetta

[shardclan]

Rebis kept having to wipe her hands on her clothes to keep them dry. She was well into her fledging years and the days of mild lessons taught in the Library had come to an end. She sat nervously at the Tribunal table feeling as though she stuck out like a serpenta. She liked the idea of being House Perihelion’s Requester and ensuring that the western part of the territory got all the things that it needed, and Saber had made it clear to her many times that sometimes it called for politics. But it was different to hear that than to sit in the Hall of Five Lights and watch resource exchange politics actually occur. 

The Morning Queen who was so personable and kind with her citizens radiated unapproachable sovereignty to the outsiders who entered her court. She didn't even have a throne--her chair was no different than of the other chairs around the exterior curve of the table but the way she sat in it, it may as well have been carved from the bricks of the Beacon and gilded with pearls. It amazed Rebis most how easily the queen seemed to change the tone of her intensity without ever actually seeming to turn it off. With the alchemists guild, ever lavishing gifts on their Celestine Queen, she was warm and benevolent. With the merchants she was firm and defensive of her citizen's well-being. With the beastclans she was humble and welcoming. With the politicians and representatives of other light courts she was coolly impenetrable. How was she supposed to stay calm before that?

Apokathisto, sitting stone-faced and watchful on the other side of the table, observed a much different queen. One who looked fondly on all the baubles and oddities that comprised most of the alchemist’s gifts and had to quickly hide flickers of consuming curiosity every time it wasn’t a mere knick knack. One who was noticeably quick-tempered with merchants, especially those who nurtured Trader’s Walk. In her defense, he also found it infuriating that they wanted her to ignore the threat of the Emperor in Hewn City for supply chain purposes--especially when the war they meant seemed to be about something in Ashfall rather than the Emperor itself. 

She was strangely dismissive of other royalty; the more finery they wore and the harder they tried to impress her, the more she treated them like chores. She struggled with defensiveness when harpy delegates were in her court, and in spite of treating the centaurs as casual neighbors. Almost all of the Tribunes were that, likely owing to the poor harpy relations of the past. 

Eventually he was meant to be a barrister, but being a student of Dalma had left him in constant contact with the history of the old clan. It was an enthralling story when he let it be, but he reminded himself constantly that it was real and the consequences were all around him. All he had to do was pick up on them. 

Admittedly difficult when across the table from him Rebis kept fidgeting. He caught her eye a few times and made subtle motions for her to calm down. Each time she nodded and visibly took a deep breath and did her best to be a good, model apprentice... She just wasn’t very good at it. Moments later she would end up nervous again. Telos had that affect on her, though gods take him if he could figure out why. 

They were both distracted from her sweaty reverie by the displeased huff of a ridgeback whose color reminded them of warm milk, steaming and fresh from the creamery. 

The Hall admitted dragons with and without glamours, and they hardly ever wore glamours at House Betelgeuse, but Rebis couldn't help pressing back against her seat as the pointed nose leaned close to appraise her.

"This is a throne room," he chided with a gravelly, booming voice that made Rebis' fins retract. "Not a nursery."

Telos full attention went to the ridgeback like a razor to his throat. "I believe you came for an audience with me, so you'll have to remind me why you are menacing an apprentice in my court."

He drew back lazily, casting his deep green gaze at the queen and then at Apokathisto across the room. "I expected the due respect of an audience that is old enough to understand the concept of confidentiality."

"This is not a throne room," Apokathisto pointed out crossly. He was surprised at how difficult it was to keep the irritation from his voice, but he made the attempt to contain it properly and continued, "This is a Tribunal Hall. Under Aphaster law, any citizen whose livelihood would be directly impacted according the the submitted subject of a given audience is permitted to attend it. Additionally, certain non-tribunal dragons are allowed to attend at will if the subject matter is not deemed politically or socially volatile."

The ridgeback stroked his chin. Despite his natural scowl, he seemed more amused than offput. "And who are you then?"

"I am the student of the Queen's Historian and Keeper of Precedent, in training to become Aphaster’s barrister," Apokathisto answered coolly, shuffling through his notes. "And she is shadowing Tribune Saber in her capacity as Requester-trainee of House Perihelion."

A silence took the floor as the ridgeback mulled this over. Rebis had the insight to close her mouth and try to look imperious and irate with the rudeness she had just endured, but it was a thin mask. She was amazed, but she was also embarrassed. Owing to the difference of their species, Apokathisto had always looked older, and she had always perceived him to be the more somber, mature one between them, but this was the first time she had ever felt overshadowed by him.

It didn't help that she saw Telos pressing back an incredibly smug smile. "Do you have anything to add, or can we proceed?"

The ridgeback shrugged, which had the effect of alarmingly shifting all of his many spines, but his voice was amicable, even impressed. "I beg pardon for my imprudence. You don't often see such a strong work ethic in wyries that age."

Rebis' eyes dropped to her hands. She didn't hear much of what actually happened after that. Only dimly did she note the ridgeback departing, Apokathisto looking up to Arcanus for approval, and that he received it not only from the knight but the queen as well. Several more names were announced, and their owners came and went, until finally they had all been exhausted.

It was only when she found the hall emptied save herself, the queen, the knight, and Saber, she became quite aware of her surroundings again. But to her relief none of them were looking at her. Telos was staring at a slip of paper, which Saber seemed to be waiting for her to make a decision on.

"Leave us alone please," she murmured. As Saber pressed gently at Rebis' back, the queen called out. "Leave her."

"Your majesty?"

She smiled faintly. "Apokathisto will never be the type to endure these situations. He's too much like Azricai to bear it. Rebis should stay."

Rebis found her nerves jumping up again as Saber left and Arcanus beckoned her to his side, almost entirely hiding her between his bulk and the chair that sat empty next to Telos. She didnt have a good view of who was coming, but she could see the queen's face and easily read her increasing disquiet as a faint clicking of footsteps announced another guest.

Recommended Listening: Peaceful Sleep - NieR: Automata

Rebis peeked as subtly as she could. She couldn't see much, but she made out a billowy shirt with an absurdly deep neckline, an eyepatch, and a head of silk-fine, gray-streaked hair. Branching antlers were silhouetted by the sunlight coming through the entry pillars--an imperial for sure.

There was no way to know who that was, but there was a distinctly different tone to the room. Telos' intensity was gone, replaced by something very different indeed.

“I heard you came to ask after me,” the imperial said warmly. Her voice was low and somewhat scratchy, and had a worn, creaky quality that reminded Rebis of Prophecy and Hart and other older dragons. “You didn’t have to leave the flowers too, I’m the one who is supposed to be sweeping you off your feet.”

“I...I’m glad you’re alright.” Despite the admittance, her temper changed. “Why did you come here? With Sornieth the way it is, you could have died.”

"I could die any time, it’s why I make sure I do what I want.” She gave a sweet smile that clearly said she had done just that. “I read with great interest that the Morning Queen of Aphaster had laid aside her veils and golden tears. I wanted to see it for myself." 

"So you see," Telos answered curtly, holding her head high to display her new markings. 

A faint chuckle bounced on the marble. "My chances haven't improved a bit. Don't worry, I haven't brought you any gifts."

"The request for audience stated otherwise."

"I lied," she said cheerfully. "Couldn't for the life of me think up another good reason, that didn’t involve bringing more bad news." Her voice dropped, sincere and humble and a little bittersweet. "As much as you deserve it, I know you don't like to be doted on. I just wanted to see you. See if you looked happy."

"My happiness isn't your affair," Telos stressed weakly.

"Neither is making flowers bloom but I still look forward to spring."

There were a few faint clicks as the woman came closer. Rebis smelled the sea on her even before she saw the color of her eye that marked her as a water native. It was creased by crow's feet that added to her handsomeness, and she was the tallest female Rebis had ever seen, towering even as she knelt on the other side of the tribunal table.

"Even if you scowl at me," she said tenderly. "I can see you've changed over the winter." She tilted her head, peering at Telos curiously but without pleading. "But not enough to walk with me as we used to, I suppose."

Rebis glanced at Telos and couldn't tell what was wrong. Her brows were drawn in such clear frustration, but she was on the verge of tears.

 "I can't," she said finally. "I can't, Gethsemene..."

Gethsemene’s crow's feet lengthened with her light-hearted smile. "Come now," she chided as she stood. "Don't cry over an old fool like me."

"I am a young fool and I will cry over whatever I wish,"  Telos snapped.

Rebis thought there was warmth in those words, and the imperial too seemed to take it as a kind of peace offering.

"That's the spirit," Gethsemene cheered. The lines of her face revealed both love and an intimate empathy that made Rebis instinctively avert her eyes. "I hope to see you again at your son’s wedding. My crew’s taking shelter under the falls until the sea is less unpredictable so our stay will be longer than usual this eon.” She winked. “I promise you wont get any more suspicious audience requests in the mean time."

Telos clenched her fists and with great difficulty she offered her hand. "Please take care of yourself, Gethsemene."

Gethsemene clasped Telos' hand in hers, pressed it adoringly but politely to her forehead, and left the hall with a meandering but jaunty step. 

Telos sighed deeply, and seemed to melt into her chair, more exhausted by that momentary exchange than by all the difficult audiences that had come before it combined. The silence stretched on and on until Rebis fumblingly tugged at Arcanus' cloak and tried to discreetly ask who that was.

"Gethsemene," Telos replied in his stead, without moving or opening her eyes. "Last epoch, during the eon of Wavecrest, she introduced herself and we began a trade agreement. Her wife is deceased; has been for...gods it would be near 3 epochs now." Her eyes opened, staring up at the rays filtering down through the skylights. "She saw herself in me, I suppose. Always offering a kind word, asking how I was feeling. She gave me her support when I was still at my most angry and wounded. Walked me through the pains of being a widow." The obvious question came to Rebis' lips, but for once she stifled her curiosity. Telos went on anyway. "Then she fell in love with me." She gave a short, sarcastic bark of laughter. "Scores of scorned suitors and she threw herself in with them."

"That's not her fault!" Rebis cried, surprised at her own defensiveness of a total stranger.

"I know it isn't." Telos pressed her eyes shut. "If I had my way, I would go back to the way things once were. But some things cannot be undone, Rebis. Gethsemene knows me and my sorrows, and I know for a fact that she is not some wheedling politician hoping to seduce their way into power or some smitten romantic who thinks I have a maiden's heart that they can re-awaken if only I am shown a grand enough gesture."

She covered her eyes, and Rebis felt her entire body go hot and prickly with panic as tears spilled from under Telos' fingers. "She spares me obvious affections because she knows it pains me, but there are dozens of little things she does, little ways she looks at me that are probably as involuntary as breath to her. I can't un-see those things or un-know her heart--and being loved without being able to return it is far more than I can bear."

An army of words rushed to Rebis' tongue, but none made it out. There were many ways to interpret those words, and yet... Only one clicked coldly into place, illuminating things Rebis immediately regretted knowing. The feeling of being too young to understand Telos shed away like old scales, and her desperate, frightening desire for even the slightest reciprocation dulled to a faint but still-painful throb.

Rebis had been in the company of every dragon in the clan, she had stayed with them, lived with them for however short a time before moving to some other household where she was equally welcome. Few spoke of Telos with personal familiarity to begin with, and it dawned on Rebis that those who did weren't Aphaster-born. They were the relics of the old clan, every single one. 

Had Telos attached to anyone since she became queen? 

Though she barely noticed, the tension she normally felt in Telos' presence drained away. She finally saw Telos as she was; as what she had always very openly stated she was, but which Rebis had never quite managed to internalize. 

Under the crown, and in private, she was still an exalt's widow and mother to a daughter than hadn't even been named before the Arcanist claimed her too.

Telos didn't have the room in her to love or be loved by Gethsemene. And finally Rebis understood that there was no room in Telos to love or be loved by her either. There never had been. There never would be.  

She looked away, desperate to see anything else. She wanted to go home--any home in Aphaster would do so long as it got her away from there. But when she looked to Arcanus,  he was staring at Telos with an expression of resigned grief. 

Her crests slowly fell until they were limp against her shoulders. 

Oh... she thought sadly. You too huh...?