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“What did you say?!”
Marika’s eyes were wide, unwilling to believe the knight that had rushed in her quarters in the middle of the night.
“Prince Godwyn was attacked,” Elpis repeated. “Dark fire burns his wound, Lady Lansseax said.”
Black Flame. It had to be. Marika had expected the recently stolen fragment from the Rune of Death to appear soon, but she never thought that its target would be anyone but her. Certainly not Godwyn, the man was loved even by their enemies, evident of that being his partner.
Suddenly she was jumping down the stairs, rushing to reach Godwyn’s chambers.
“Go to Ranni’s quarters right this second,” she yelled to the commander that was now struggling to keep up. “No one but me enters the Princess’ chambers, am I clear?”
“Yes, my queen!” Elpis confirmed and she turned left to a small corridor, rushing to the barracks for more guards.
Marika wanted to leap off the balcony to avoid the minute it would take the lift to reach the bottom. But instead, she used the time in it to take two small pebbles out of her belt.
Small and inconspicuous, the rocks were enchanted to form Glintstone Pigeons, a secure and easy way to contact whomever she needed. She shuttered them both with her fingers, summoning the tiny blue birds, and they hovered in her palm, awaiting her message.
“Godwyn’s been attacked with the Rune of Death. Renna, I’m keeping Ranni shut in until I know she’s safe. Warn the brothers. Miquella, quadruple your defences in Elphael, child, I won’t ask again. Malenia, I know you’re listening, force him if he doesn’t, this is true danger.”
The lift reached the bottom, and Marika threw the Glintstone Pigeons in the air before running down the dark road.
The entire path to the Prince’s chambers was charred by lighting and filled with corpses. Dark, lanky, veiled corpses. Their once golden daggers were now black and twisted, no doubt from being imbued with the Rune of Death. These people used to be her own assassins. Her very own tools.
The door to the bedchamber was wide open, and the knight Vyke was standing guard at the door, along with a dozen dragon cultists.
“Queen Marika,” he greeted her with a grim voice as he move to the side, letting her pass. “Lansseax and Noble Fia are with him, the healers haven’t arrived yet.”
“Gather the bodies and knives,” she commanded quickly. “No one is to touch them without my say.”
And before Vyke could respond, she entered the dark room.
Marika froze at the entrance.
Scrolls and papers littered the floor of the grand room. Some were soaking in blood, others were burned or slashed. The wooden columns that were incorporated in the bed to steady the roof were scarred with lighting strikes. At each side of the bed stood the two Ancient Dragons.
Fortissax, or Fia as they were called in their human form, was on the floor, their legs twisted like broken branches. They didn’t register Marika enter, focused only on holding on to Godwyn, as if their grip could keep him in this life.
Lansseax stood tall on the other side, her expression dark and worried. Red lighting still sparkled around her clawed hands. Patches of scales were on her skin and small horns grew from her head. It seemed that she had partially transformed for the fight.
She gestured for Marika to come closer.
In between them, the white bed sheets were now dark with blood, burned and torn in places. And on them, Godwyn, frozen. He had fallen on his side, facing Fia.
Marika hesitantly approached Lansseax, and her heart stopped at the sight of Godwyn’s back.
Like a river curving through a mountain, the assassins’ dagger had carved deep into Godwyn’s back, twisting and turning from his shoulderblades down to the waist. Black Flame was smouldering at the edges, slowly eating away his flesh —and as Marika was well aware— his soul.
She looked on helplessly. She knew from experience, no healer could halt this, let alone heal him completely.
For a moment, her eyes watered but she refused to let the tears fall. She swallowed the knot that had formed in her throat and turned her attention to Lansseax.
“What happened? Exactly.”
“I only arrived after hearing Fortissax,” Lansseax’s voice carried a deep echo of her old dragon voice. “The guards were dead. Six assassins held them to the ground, two were holding Godwyn and one was carving his back,” she shook her head, retracting her more draconic features inside. “I attacked the ones holding Godwyn, then the rest. Vyke caught up just after I finished and send for your commander to inform you.”
Marika didn’t answer. They stood in silence, watching helplessly as the Black Fire did its work.
“Marika…” Lansseax paused, as if unsure of what she was about to ask. “These were your assassins, did you..?”
“Don’t you dare—” Marika’s voice cracked, making herself reel back in surprise.
Lansseax’s features softened and she turned away. “Apologies.”
And then, as if someone blew out a candle, the Flames vanished.
“What—”
Marika was on the other side in a second, searching for life in her son’s eyes. But the once gold-blue eyes remained milky white, unmoving and unresponding. Still, the Black Flame had faded, so there was a sliver of hope.
“Vyke! Hurry up with the healers, now!” she yelled.
Twenty minutes later, the only people in the room were Godwyn, Fia and a dozen healers. One of the elder perfumers had just stepped outside to give an early report.
“Noble Fia is recovering from the poison—”
“Poison?” Lansseax cut her off.
“We believe that they were given paralytic poison, there are still traces of it in their mouths. For Noble Fia, it seems that it activated only partially —I assume due to their draconic nature— but lord Godwyn was likely fully incapacitated when the attack took place.”
“How is he now?” Marika asked.
“He…” the perfumer hesitated for a moment. “His breathing is stable and all vital organs seem to be working fine, if only at a slower rate. So far, our attempts to heal the wound weren’t successful, but it’s still early in the treatment,” she trailed her sentence, hesitant.
“What is it?” Marika insisted.
“Well… I am worried that his soul—” her sentence was cut short by a loud shout.
“Queen Marika!”
Elpis pushed aside the two cultists that tried to stop her, sending one on the ground.
“You need to get to Ranni’s chambers, now!” the old commander had skipped all formalities at this point. “She’s burning with the same dark fire.”
Not Ranni. Not her too.
Her heart could be turn to steel only so many times.
“I explained why we were guarding her, and next time I checked the room, she was burning,” Elpis continued, but Marika had stopped listening.
And once more she was running to another child, to another scene of death. She ignored the roads and lifts now, using her godlike strength to leap over roofs and on the higher levels of the city.
Within a minute, she was at Ranni’s guest quarters.
About a dozen knights stood at the entrance, most looking at a man burning at the side of the door. They tried to explain as Marika moved to the door.
“My queen! The commander said not to touch her but we tried to douse the flames and he—”
Marika moved past, ignoring them.
The smell of burning flesh hit her first. Then she saw her. Ranni’s body was in a fetal position, entirely covered by the Black Flames. Her back was haphazardly carved in what looked like an attempt to mirror Godwyn’s wound. She still held on to one of the black, twisted knives.
No assassin had passed the guards, this was Ranni’s own doing.
Marika felt numb.
She was one of the most powerful beings in the Lands, yet her children were dying. All the power in the world was for nothing. What was the point of it all then, if her own children could be killed in their beds? What was the point of exiling her firstborns, if the power she retained couldn’t protect the ones that came after?
There was no point.
In her numbness, a realisation came.
Her assassins had become far more loyal to the Golden Order than her, which was the reason she had discarded them. Whoever had ordered Godwyn’s assassination must had done so in the name of the Greater Will. After all, the Golden Order fanatics had never truly accepted his joining with an Ancient Dragon.
And so, from hopelessness, fury rose.
She had destroyed and salted the Lands for the Greater Will, she had build it a religion and a country, yet it let her children die like flies. It demanded her omen sons to be killed, and then allowed the prodigy son and an Empyrean to be killed as if they were nothing. As if her children were tools for it to pick and choose.
With steady, fast steps, Marika moved to her chambers and picked up her old hammer. If this Outer God used and broke her children like toys, then she would break its very hold on the world. The eons she had spend building it up were for nought anyway. Along with the power she had gotten servitude, and now her own childrens’ deaths.
It was maybe fitting, that she who burned religions and cultures in the Golden Order’s name, would also be the one who would shatter it.