[11,987 E.A.]

—Alanis—

Palia was once a beautiful continent— from cascading waterfalls to the sheer faces of the mountains whose glorious golden peaks scrape against a pale blue sky. The forests were lush with vegetation, the land never lacking in resources, and the unpolluted seas a deep cerulean blue. Looking out over the realm, mere days after giving birth, the Palia I'd known for a near century is gone. In her place is a war torn landscape, shrouded in darkness. 

The ghosts of the fallen seem to hover over the battlefield, ever restless, ever vindictive. With outstretched hands, they level their ghastly fingers at me, accusing me, damning me.

"It's your fault, Mikari." the dead mock. "You've sent us to our deaths. You've sealed our fate."

They're right, of course. I believed I could bring Agni home from the skies. I believed I could fulfill the centuries-old prophecy. Instead, I damned us all.

This should be the happiest time of my life— celebration and song for weeks on end for the merging of the Cehrinen and Velurian bloodlines, bringing peace for a millennium. Instead, I'm faced with the extinction of my people, and the dilapidation of my home and family. I've been robbed of my husband, I've given away my child.

I furrow my brow, fury and grief building up within me, threatening to erupt.

"What can be done?" I curse at the sky, for naught but my own death awaits me. For the first time in my life, blasphemy is on the tip of my tongue— how can Agni lavish such blessings upon me, just to rip them all away?

I pace across the outcropping, the cave behind me glowing with firelight. I don't so much as shiver despite the chill at this altitude. A chasm of fear and loneliness threatens to consume me, the voices of the damned grow louder still, but Leiolaciya's presence is a familiar thrum in my mind— she's here even now.

I kick an unassuming pebble across the rocky outcropping. It soars over the ravine, propelled through the air by the force of my blow. I watch as it plummets into the narrow, rushing river below. I've fallen from heights myself, out of the once-great halls and spiraling towers of Avhalia, to the bloodied fields and borderlands. I never thought I, a great Mikari Queen, would be comparing myself to something so trivial as a pebble, but here I am.

"Lay down, Alanis. You'll exhaust yourself." Leio swoops down from the sky, her underbelly so close to my head, I could reach up and touch it. She carries a mutilated animal clenched in her jaw. The dragon lands gracefully on the outcropping, dropping her prey at my feet.

A deer, she brought me a deer. It lands with a thud, sending up a cloud of dust. I avoid meeting its lifeless gaze– the sight rouses images of my own people looking at me in a similar manner, dead on the battlefield.

"No. I've rested enough. Jallan's gone, our armies have been obliterated. So much death... I've had enough of this— hiding like a coward."

"It is not cowardice to regain your strength. You've just birthed your hatchling."

My baby is not a hatchling, but I don't bother to correct her. It doesn't change the nauseating feeling in my gutt, or my conscience accusing me of fleeing, while Esiril converged upon what was left of our scant army. I had not anticipated this outcome, nor the true scope of the circlet's power, lest I'd never have awakened such an artifact.

"Like I said, I've rested enough and I have strength enough. There's nothing stopping them from entering the deep and claiming your egg. The war is over, Leio. The Esrilians have Jallan. They'll torture and kill him." I don't want to imagine the horrors they must be putting him through as we speak. He'll be a traitor in their eyes. Esirilian, born and raised, Avhalian by allegiance and by marriage. Grudges have been harbored for centuries. I was foolish to think that'd change with Jallan. Cehrinen monarchs would do anything for power— a power I'd unwittingly, damagingly, made available to them.

I can hear my mother's voice even now, "Marrying a Cehrinen does not change the lines of our succession. Nor our bond with the dragons." I didn't listen.

I think back to the events of these past months. They've slaughtered Avhalia's best warriors in battle, hunted and captured my husband, and even sacrificed their own Mavros wolves for this cursed war. They will not stop until they've overturned every stone in Avhalia to find where Leio and I have hidden her egg. I can only pray it will remain safe in the sinkhole.

"Not all is lost.." Leio doesn't need to spell it out for me. What we must give— the cost to ensure Esiril's demise.

"Let us eat then," I murmur, nodding toward the carcass lying betwixt us two. I stride toward the cave, where an ever flickering fire awaits. Crouching at the base of the makeshift fire circle, I gently feed the dying embers bits of dried leaves and twigs from the small pile Jallan had amassed days prior...

Jallan...

A pang of grief lances through me like a bolt of lightning. I feel as though my heart should give out at any moment. But it doesn't. I'm still breathing. I'm still here, right where he left me. While he left to take my place on the battlefield, carrying the last of my people into the jaws of a cold, brutal death.

The deer's lacerated flesh tears easily beneath the blade of Arijeti I hold in my hands. I never liked skinning. Especially not now, without a proper skinning knife. The feel of raw, still-warm flesh beneath bloodied fingers once made me squirm. Not now though, no matter how I'd like to.

Leio's gleaming, razor sharp teeth slicing into her prey. She is sure to tear every shred of meat from the grisly carcass. I lift an arm, raising my sword to hold my slice of venison over the open flame. I take my time, turning the blade like a spit, ever so slowly, watching the juices drip- dripping onto searing hot rocks. Each intermittent drop lands with a sizzle, while flames lap at the rocks, devouring the substance and cleansing the surface.

When I tear into the tough meat, I do my best not to shudder. I raise my gaze to the ceiling of the cave, focusing on the fissures throughout the ancient stone. Despite my efforts to focus on anything else, memories flood my mind. Images flash, like pages flipping through a book every life I'd ended with this blade, the same blade that I'm now using to cook meat for my own sustenance.

I examine the gleaming white metal, completely unmarred, not so much as a scratch upon the blade. I don't need to peer closely to see it is free of discoloration by the flames. Any other mundane metal would have been blackened, warped, diminished in value and craftsmanship.

Arijeti does not easily damage in the fire, mined from volcanic recesses tens of thousands of feet below the ground's surface. This metal ore requires monumentally high temperatures to be worked as it had been, and a blade such as this hasn't been made in over a millennia. Only the first monarchs of Avhalia, children of Elanvi, had been able to withstand the deadly heat under the mountains. Amongst the magma fields beneath the Lykavian range, the first king mined Arijeti, the ore of God, to forge this very blade.

A legendary weapon, brandished by kings and queens. Legends claim it to be of the same make as the Circlet of Elanvi. Yet I've reduced it to no more than a spit upon which I roast my dinner. Thus crumples the Mikari, and the Velurian dynasty. I stand, wiping my greasy palms on my leather breeches.

"The line lives on," Leiolaciya says down the soul bond between us. "Your hatchling..."

"I've had my fill. Let us ride to meet our fate," I interject before Leio can finish her thought. She means only to comfort me, but I don't need petty reassurances. Worst came to worst, all we can do now is attempt to remedy my mistakes.

She looks like she wants to argue, and I think for a moment Leio might again insist upon my resting. However, in her wisdom, the dragon does not offer any further objections in regard to my condition. Leiolaciya lowers her body to the ground, laying flat on the mountaintop. I climb upon her back, my sword sheathed at my side, bow slung across my back.

"It is the greed and jealousy festering within them," I bite out, spitting on the ground beside us, cursing the Esrilians who'd rallied to Lirius' call. "Mikari would never have thrown their lives away so carelessly. We overlooked Lirius' threats for too long."

Sensing my thoughts, Leiolaciya exhales through her nose, sending up a puff of smoke.

Or perhaps, I'd simply underestimate him...

She says, "Power mongering has a way of changing one's heart, mon amicalan. In Agni's wisdom, He allotted them a lesser power, and a lesser responsibility. But not all of mankind shares these sentiments. Perhaps you should not be so hasty to judge the whole of mankind for the sins of the few."

Human lives are short as the day is short, like the sun chasing after the moon throughout eternity. Always in its shadow. Only the blessed will watch the years come and go. We are prone to emotion, but they've made a habit out of giving themselves over to their passions, rebelling against Agni's ancient tenets of peace. Thus is the danger of dealing with the common man— their resentment is always just under the surface.

And I've just trusted a mortal priest with my lineage and legacy.

"Is this supposed to bring me some semblance of comfort, Leio?" It doesn't. "If you'd stayed with Jallan he might still be—"

"Indeed you should take comfort, Alanis." Leiolaciya interrupts me this time. "Your hatchling's fate lies with the priest. Pray for his virtue, and his longevity. For it is Avhalia, and the Mikari, that have fallen. As for my loyalties, I am God-sworn to protect you. I will not leave your side." I know this, she is sworn to me, and I to her.

"I will not be the last of the Mikari," my words come out sounding surer than I feel. Resolve alone is not enough. "My child is all that remains."

God, I wish Jallan were here.

Wishing is futile, what's done is done, but still...

It might have gone differently.

Or I might've lost Leio, too...

Shame washes over me for snapping as I had. I'm not the only one who'd felt the heaviness of loss these past weeks. She'd left her own egg to follow me into battle. Its safety remains yet to be seen to. Neither of us will live to raise our offspring. As usual, Leiolaciya picks up on my thoughts.

She says, "That is the way of my kind. As with my mother, and her mother before her. We'd only counted on more time. The sun sets this era, but it will rise again with our posterity."

But first, we must end this war. We must weigh the cost.

Leiolaciya swoops low, her powerful wings spread wide. Her determination is evident in the tense muscles of her back. She spouts flames of her own to raze everything in our path. The sight of mutilated bodies causes bile to rise up in my throat. Esrilian soldiers move throughout the battlefield, finishing off our fallen soldiers and allies. Many of them, too many of them wear the viridian color of Avhalia, the single golden rose upon many a breastplate is spattered red with the blood of my people. A scattered few wear the royal blue and ivory stripes of Lykavia.

I shudder upon Leiolaciya's back, tilting my head back to allow the skin of my cheeks to drink in the pale moonlight, even as the corpses are set aflame by Leiolaciya's breath.

Agni, mikai mei le dur valonti.

My prayer, even if it indeed proves to be in vain, gives me a surge of new energy, a renewed purpose.

Agni, bless me with your strength.

I wonder where Jallan met his match. The spot that Lirius Cehrinen captured my husband. Jallan insisted on returning to fight in my stead. He'd been captured in the night, residing over the battlefield while I bore our child.

Absently, I place my right hand over my still-bloated belly, now devoid of the life that I'd grown in my womb. The labor pains had been a menace in the midst of battle, but the contractions paled in comparison to the pain of losing Jallan. Even more so in comparison to willfully giving away my baby. With my left hand, I dig my nails into my chest as if to rip my own heart out.

I draw blood, but halt myself from causing further damage.

"No." Leio's voice rings out in my head, powerful and commanding. My kingdom is dilapidated, my child suckles from a nursemaid's breast. My people are dead and dying. It is an ancient custom to give one's own heart when one has lost all which resides within it. Nonetheless, I still have a purpose to fulfill.

"We cannot singlehandedly rescue Jallan. But I can end this war and his suffering. In our final act, we will destroy the circlet— even if it means Agni will never return," I open my thoughts to Leiolaciya's, letting our dual rage and purpose spur each other onward. She does not attempt to talk me out of it, but her sorrow shimmers and flits along the threads of fate connecting us two.

We're soaring above the plains, Avhalia in ruin to the north, Esiril retreating to the south. The majority of the Esirilian armies have receded, all but victorious. They will fortify the city against us. My dragon and I are all that remains of Avhalia's war efforts. They will not be able to stand against us.

Still, a scattered few arrows are loosed from enemy bows. They merely glance off Leiolaciya's once beautiful, iridescent scales, now coated with a thick layer of ash and grime. The wounded cry out for mercy at the shadow of our passing, left to perish on the battlefield. They are silenced by Leiolaciya's flame. Agni's breath to live by, Leiolaciya's to die by.

The landscape as far as the eye can see is in complete chaos and smoking destruction, littered with Lykavian, Avhalian, and Esirilian bodies alike. My grief is like a tidal wave, and my magic an inferno within me.

"Though man may inhabit the world, they will not remember the struggle for power, the conflict of the Mikari, nor the truth behind this great war," I might sound rooted in my conviction if I were delivering this as a speech to my people, but the terror I feel is not so easily hidden from Leio, who merely humms in reply. No words, no utterings of false comfort. I'm grateful for the truth in her silence, rather than taking heart in false encouragement.

"Take us to Esiril," I say, clinging to Leiolaciya. The thunderous beat of wind against her wings is deafening. She says nothing more, but I still sense her grief. It's like holding up a mirror to reflect on my own. She does as I ask, understanding what's to come. What we must do.