Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

Elin stopped for a second too long.

Then she kept going, but a touch slower. Her eyes stayed forward.

"There was no Sky Sovereign before me" Elin said, simply.

Raizen frowned. "So who ruled the skies? The beasts? The forest"

"The Beast Sovereign" she answered. "That woman..."

There was a weight in the way she said woman that made it sound like an insult.

"What woman?"

"I hate her" Elin added calmly.

Raizen blinked. "Why?"

Elin clicked her tongue, searching for words.

"She loved making things" Elin said. "Creatures. Beasts. Constructs. All of them spun out from her Eon. Wings, claws, strange bones, strange minds. It was beautiful work."

Beautiful work should have sounded like praise. It did not.

"Then what was the problem?" he asked.

"She never saw them as lives" Elin said. "Only as tools."

The air between them felt heavier.

"She believed beasts existed to carry people. To fight for people. To bleed for people. To stand in front when the arrows came, and die in neat lines while the important ones watched from safe walls."

Elin's jaw tightened. Her steps didn't.

"Even the ones she made" she went on. "Eon constructs. Born from her power. She still put collars on them. Limits. Chains. If they died, it was fine. She could always make more."

Raizen thought of the fox-deer pushing its young from the river edge. The dragon curling over the cave. The little blue birds. All the small, stubborn acts of care he had seen down here.

"They weren't human" he said, a little helpless. "Maybe she thought it was normal."

"Nyxes aren't human either" Elin replied. "Do you want them to have a Sovereign who calls them tools and stuff like that?"

Raizen flinched at the thought.

"No."

"Then there you have it."

They walked a few more steps.

The border of the colorless land moved toward them.

"What happened to her?" Raizen asked. "The Beast Sovereign"

Elin didn't answer.

For a second, he thought maybe she had not heard.

"What happened to her?" he repeated.

His shoulders tightened again. Not his will.

Not nearly as bad as before. Just a small, sharp pinch, like a hand on the back of his neck. A warning.

Then it faded.

Elin let out a very slow breath.

"She died in a fire..." Elin smiled.

"Huh?" He waited.

"...Protecting the Ukai Ruler."

That, he had not expected.

"Protecting him?" Raizen echoed.

"Yes."

Something moved behind Elin's eyes. Not softness. Not exactly grief. Something complicated.

"Did you see it?" he started.

The tiny warning squeeze brushed his muscles again. His throat went tight for half a second.

He decided to shut his mouth.

Elin glanced back over her shoulder, just once.

"It is not something you need to be afraid of" she said. "Her Sovereign life story is finished. Mine isn't."

Raizen watched the side of her face, the way her expression had gone flat and clear again.

"Then why tell me at all?" he asked.

"Because cause and effect are rude teachers" Elin said. "You are asking why the forest looks like this. Why Ukai still feels hate towards me. The answer has a dead woman in it. I will never pretend she didn't exist."

"What matters" Elin went on, looking ahead again, "is that I am the Sky Sovereign now. The sky listens to me. The beasts listen to me. This forest listens to me."

She smiled, but there was no joke inside it.

"And I am trying very hard not to make the same mistakes."

Raizen let that sit.

The dead basin lay behind them now, a wide scar in the earth.

He didn't ask more.

Some answers, he understood, wouldn't come without a price.

They reached the hidden tunnel entrance, slipped past the curtain of roots and ducked inside.

Same stone walls. The roof low enough that Raizen had to tilt his head a bit. Thin roots brushing his shoulders. The stale, dry air from above gave way slowly to something cooler, wetter.

Elin walked ahead of him, hands linked behind her head, elbows out. She stretched once as she moved, spine arching.

Her shirt was still damp from the waterfall. The fabric clung to her back more than he wanted to notice.

He looked very carefully at the wall instead.

"Still tense?" she asked without turning around.

"After you turned me into a statue? A little" he said.

"You're fine" she replied. "If I wanted to really hurt you, you'd still be trying to remember how to breathe."

"...Comforting."

She laughed, the sound soft in the tunnel.

"I'm not your enemy, Raizen. If I were, you would have known a long time ago. Back in the Rust Room. Or in the Underworks. Or at the Lotus. Or in the Arena. Or on the Mountain."

"I get it…"

He frowned at her back.

"You were watching even then."

"I told you that already."

"You tell me a lot of things" he said. "You don't explain most of them."

"Good habit. Explanations get you killed."

He almost rolled his eyes.

"Elin."

"What."

"There are still things that don't make sense" he said. "You declared war on a city. You rewrote an entire forest. You're a Sovereign, but you act like you're... Hiding from your own job."

The tunnel curved up. The roar of the waterfall started to grow, faint at first, then louder as they descended toward the cave.

"Do you always push this hard?" she asked finally.

"Yes."

"It's very annoying."

"You said you like that."

"I did say that, actually… But I meant your perseverance, not insisting with questions."

He opened his mouth again.

"Look" she continued, and there was a thread of tired honesty under the mock complaint, "there are answers you're not ready for. Not because you are weak, but because once you know them, you can't… Hmm… Un-know them. Every choice after that gets heavier."

"Too late for that" Raizen said quietly.

"Not at all." she replied. "I'm just trying not to crush you all at once."

"What do you mean?"

"This world… Is far darker than you can imagine. It carries deep wounds of a past that cannot be healed"

He fell silent.

They walked the rest of the way with only their footsteps and the growing sound of water for company.

The vibrant colors hit Raizen in the face. Green. Gold. Blue. The warm glow of old lanterns. The cool pulse of lichen. Movement everywhere.

After the gray, it was almost violent.

Raizen's shoulders loosened without his permission. The sight of the river and creatures below pressed the dead land back into the corner of his mind.

Elin hopped down onto the familiar narrow steps that led to her main platform.

He followed, eyes flicking across the cave.

Everything looked the same.

Almost.

The dragon wasn't on the platform.

Raizen glanced around until he spotted it on a lower disc, curled in on itself, eyes closed. Its tail twitched once as if in a dream.

Elin didn't seem surprised.

She climbed the last few steps and stepped onto her home platform.

Raizen followed right after her.

Then he froze.

There was someone sitting at her table.

The figure was half in shadow, back to the cave wall, one leg crossed over the other. He wasn't dressed like Ukai's tamers.

Dark clothes. No crest. No bright colors. The light from the nearest lantern caught on a gloved hand, on the edge of a clean, well-kept boot.

Raizen's fingers twitched toward his sword hilt.

The figure turned their head slightly, just enough for the lantern to catch part of a face - a hint of a jawline, eyes that reflected light in a calm, flat way.

When they spoke, their voice was smooth and cool. Polite. Like they'd walked into a meeting they'd been invited to a long time ago.

"Greetings, Elin Ciela."