"This is complete and utter lunacy!"

"Our lives are lunacy at the moment, I'm afraid," Astrid quipped in response. "Might as well embrace it, Seabass."

Sebastian stood with Astrid inside a grim and dingy part of the fortress known as Treason's Tower. A thick, wooly tapestry currently rubbed against his spine as he leaned away from the ever darker part Astrid planned on leading him. Across from the more eery area, on the side from which he had just come, was a better-lit circular room where Astrid had apparently grown up taking her elemental lessons from the two captured Scribes.

Unfortunately, this part of the tower was more narrow and dark. It reeked of mildew, rusted iron, and infection. A low, tortured moan rattled from one of the caged cells to his right.

Astrid nudged him. "I bet you wished that portal had whisked you away to Soleita after all, huh? What a shame." She ticked her tongue, but there was enough light from the single torch on the wall for him to catch her uneasy frown. Nevertheless, her relentless bravado carried on. "Imagine being on a tropical island rather than in this mangy place. But, alas, there are answers to be had."

"The Soleitian Academy has an extensive library." Sebastian muttered the fact like it would help resolve his fleeting courage. "In fact, Thaddeus Currel spent four years studying his portal theory there."

"Well, that's complete rubbish. Currel couldn't have made it out of Rainier's borders without being tried for treason."

His voice grew firmer with the recitation. "Some claim he was smuggled out in the hull of a fishing boat. He was let off somewhere in the middle of the Ember Sea on the edge of Rainier's border and then swam the rest of the way with the aid of two dolphins."

Astrid snorted. "Is that an Eilibir legend? Did your father captain the boat, perhaps?"

Sebastian half-smiled. "Possibly."

"I should have known such drab narration of textbooks would have calmed your nerves."

Sebastian wasn't so sure about that. His legs currently shook under his weight as if someone had traded in his blood for rocks. There had been at least two hundred steps he and Astrid had climbed, not to mention the hazardous terrain in the tunnels they had traipsed through, and Sebastian had yet to have a moment to simply sit. Stare. Read. But adrenaline miraculously still pumped his heart, zinging in the sinews of his muscles, propelling him onwards. Even if it was into a gross smelling dark abyss.

Although, could this place be called an abyss if it was above ground?

Focus, Bash.

He reached out and lifted the torch from its sconce. When he looked towards Astrid for directions on what to do next, an amused expression of approval flickered across her face, icy eyes melting under the light from the flickering flames.

"Oh. Er—" Sebastian raised a brow and held the torch out to her. "Did you want to be in charge of it?"

"And take away your newfound sense of dominating manhood? Absolutely not."

Her smirk should have warned him, but she acted far too quickly. The flames of the torch surged, flaring upwards with a whoosh of heat that nearly singed Sebastian's eyelashes. Within his next blink of surprise, a small orb of fire danced in Astrid's cupped palms. Shadows contorted her pleased grin in such a way that when she turned to lead the way into the cells, her laugh sounded sinisterly grotesque.

"That was unnecessary," he muttered.

"I could hardly let you have all the fun."

What, exactly, was the fun she thought he would have had to go into the box of his brain categorized as Astrid's Eccentricities. Even so, he hurried after her, trying not to shiver as she led them past one, two, three—six—barred cells. They were so dark and deep that not even the light from Sebastian's torch and Astrid's flaming ball could penetrate the shadows huddling within them. Regardless, he had the eerie sensation that things moved, breathed, just on the other side of the oxidizing copper bars.

"Serah and Zev live here? Weren't they your tutors?"

His hushed words sounded impossibly loud. They condensed in the freezing temperatures of this place and popped against Astrid's neck.

"I doubt it's a bit of real estate they would have willingly chosen." Astrid must have noticed the appalled expression on his face because she sighed, a heavy sound that, for some reason, caused Sebastian to want to reach for her hand. "I've always made sure they've had blankets, warm food, stolen cloaks from my guards' barracks—" she twisted her neck to share a small grin with him—"Once, I even snuck a solar flare up here so they could have some light. It nearly blew a hole in the wall. There's a sizable dent, at least, but the light lasted for nearly a full day."

Knowing Astrid, he hoped she hadn't done that on purpose. He had only seen the two Scribes once, after Astrid had returned down the mountain of the first task, but they looked old enough to be his grandparents. They had kind eyes.

"How much of a threat could they be to warrant this?"

"How much of a threat are you to warrant this entire tournament?"

A sharp silence settled between them. It felt like Sebastian had cut himself on her question.

With an abrupt crack of her heels, Astrid stopped at the end of the horrible length of cells. Without looking at him, she doused the elemental flames in her hands, releasing the threads, and then grabbed the torch from his grip. The cells had culminated into a dead-end that felt somehow colder. She placed the torch in an empty sconce before turning back to face him.

"Serah and Zev were my tutors, yes, but they remain prisoners of the Salvera Crown. During the Purge, they tried to destroy us. Remember that, fisherboy."

She rapped her knuckles against the copper bars, and Sebastian realized it wasn't only a dead-end but a final cell. He found himself holding his breath and had to release it with one, final question.

Well. Maybe not his final one.

"Every Author had a Scribe." He lowered his voice when he heard a slither of movement from the last cell's depths. "So whose scribes were Serah's and Zev's?"

"You can ask them yourself. They may not have tongues, but they do have ears."

"Wait. They don't have tongues?"

"Besides," Astrid continued, "they already seem to know you."

"Me?"

"Well, they knew of you. It's how I found you, after all."

Sebastian could only gape at the bombs she had hurled his way before two pairs of eyes appeared and gleamed in the darkness like white wraiths. Even though he had seen them before, Sebastian half-expected to find skeletons staring back at him. But as the flames of the torch flickered, he saw the native Soleitian bronze skin of their wizened, soft faces. Though perhaps soft was an incorrect description for at least one of them. Zev, the male, was visibly scowling. His dark eyes narrowed, fingers angrily gesturing towards Astrid.

For a few moments, the two of them communicated without words. Astrid held up her empty hands, palms out. "No need for such crude language, Zev. I have no blades on me this time." She grinned as if remembering a fond memory. Zev's gaze simply narrowed further. "Well, none currently in my grasp, anyways."

Sebastian saw the jagged scars across the Scribe's bald scalp. He hoped Astrid hadn't put them there with whatever knife they were currently insinuating. Curious, he watched Serah's right hand as it shifted through the chilly air like they were writing soundless words there. Her free hand curled around one of the bars. Sebastian startled when her nail pressed into his thumb.

He wasn't sure when he had gripped it.

Child, her eyes spoke. Carissénas.

He heard it in the voice of his mother.

Sebastian pressed closer. "Do you know me?"

Serah held his gaze, but Zev placed a quick hand on her shoulder as if to snatch her away. His head jerked towards Astrid. Even without words, Sebastian could understand his motions. Zev, at least, did not trust the Salvera princess. Not surprising, to be fair, considering his people were enemies of Davina's, who had defeated their Authors during the Purge. Entire generations were wiped clean, which apparently, possibly, included Sebastian's birth parents. If he were truly an Author.

Of that, he still was not certain, no matter what Astrid claimed.

Apparently, Astrid had read Zev's intentions, as well, because she lowered her voice and said, "We are here to simply talk. Truthfully. It has become rather apparent that my mother has fed me far too many lies." She reached a hand inside her cloak. "Here."

To Sebastian's shocking embarrassment, Astrid shrugged out of her cloak. It fell fluidly to the ground behind her, but she was already busy yanking her tunic out of her pants. Sebastian felt it best to look away, but when the glint of a silver blade flashed against her stomach, Sebastian's eyes widened. From underneath her shirt she produced one of the knives she had collected from the tunnels. When she had found the time to stash it there, Sebastian hadn't a clue. She bent low to the ground, slowly, as if approaching a startled stallion, and then slid it under the slim gaps of the bar and into the Scribes' cell.

"Feel free to hold it if it makes you feel better," she said. "I assure you it's sharp enough. I planned on using it to gut the two fae warriors who ambushed us in the fortress tunnels tonight." Her hands went to her hips, staring between the two. "Have anything to share with us about that?"

Zev placed his bare foot on the short dagger and pulled it away from the bars and closer to himself and Serah. His gaze shifted to where Sebastian knew Astrid's copper cuff imprisoned her elemental connections. It was just visible beneath the long sleeves of her tunic, a slight bulge around her skin.

"She's telling the truth," Sebastian muttered. "She won't hurt you."

Astrid shrugged. "See? Have a little faith."

Serah looked from Astrid to Sebastian before she reached a scarred hand through the bars, face up, offering it to Sebastian.

"I'm sorry," Sebastian stammered, "I'm unsure what you want."

He jumped when Astrid took his wrist, slid it through the bars, and flipped it into Serah's awaiting grasp. "It's alright," she said. "She communicates this way. Her words will be spelled onto your skin."

Serah bent her head over his forearm. Her fingers were soft as she traced them over his skin, her coiled, greying hair brushing against him.

Yes, she spelled. I know.

Sebastian's heart thumped so hard he was positive it thrummed as loudly as the Iced Guards' drums. So, Astrid had been correct. The Scribes did know him. "How?"

You resemble her.

His next breath caught. "Who?" But he remembered the words of the Soleitian man in the portal: "You share the face of my priestess."

His lungs forgot how to breathe.

Your mother.

Perhaps he had jumbled up her letters, confused her random scrawls for words his paranoia had brought to life in his brain. But when he looked up into Serah's steady, calm face, the truth was written there as well.

Carissénas.

That was all he heard as his breaths sawed in and out of his chest like Zev stuck that dagger into him over and over again. Carissénas. Except this time, it wasn't Imogene's voice he heard, but another's. A whisper of a voice that crawled up his spine, wrapped around his neck, and cooed into his ear.

He felt like he was choking.

Astrid grabbed his elbow and shook it.

It wrenched Sebastian back from whatever airless abyss Serah's confession had sent him into. He came up gasping, head spinning, stuck between Serah's gentle hold on him and Astrid's pale, worried expression. Her own fingers were scrambling over Sebastian's and in between Serah's, her tone tight and sharp as she said, "What did you do to him?"

Two final words scratched into his skin before Astrid successfully broke their contact.

Don't tell.

A grating sound scraped against stone as Zev seized Astrid's knife from the ground. Before Sebastian could process any other stimuli, Astrid had shoved him back from the cell, one fist still entangled in his dirty, disheveled cloak.

"What did she tell you?"

I—" Sebastian swallowed. He caught Serah's solemn gaze over Astrid's shoulder. "I'm not sure," he said. "They knew nothing about the attack tonight."

The lie flowed so easily it momentarily stunned him. Though, technically, he wasn't even sure if it was a lie. How could something be a lie if he didn't know the truth? He shook his head, trying to force his blood to resume its normal path from his rapidly beating heart to his head.

Astrid peered at him. "You are always certain of, literally, everything; yet, you are unsure about this?"

Serah's words burned on his skin like she had used fire for ink. Don't tell. It was easier to stare at Astrid's chin as he muttered, "It is far from a normal way to communicate. Perhaps I'm not well-versed in it."

Astrid made a non-committal sound. "Uh-huh." She let go of Sebastian, taking a step back. "You know, I don't particularly care for being left out of such pertinent conversations."

Her hand curled around one of the bars, eyes flashing. "Heal her."

Sebastian balked. "Heal what?"

She gestured towards Serah whose expression flickered with a sense of alarm that Sebastian himself could feel tearing through the nerves of his fingers and toes.

"Her tongue, of course. You claim you cannot adapt to her communication methods, so we can help her adapt to ours. She should be more than willing." Her tone sharpened suspiciously when she pressed her grin into the cell. "After all, was it not you who asked me to protect Sebastian in the first task?"

That was news to Sebastian. He leapt closer to the Scribes' cell. "Protect me? Why?"

"Besides," Astrid continued, "it will help her, as well. Imagine being a Scribe with all the knowledge of the realms and having no way to truly communicate it. I imagine it would be your worst nightmare, Seabass."

Sebastian could only stare at her. It was the same girl who had launched into a snowball fight with riotous laughter, had selflessly made herself bleed to pull him from the portal—It was she who stood before him, but Astrid seemed as vastly different as if she had donned the mask of all the worst traits of Matthias. Emotionless. Violent. As brittle and cold as a layer of thin ice.

Some of her older words flashed invisible wounds across her face, and Sebastian remembered them: "What can be broken can be put back together," she had once told him, "That was what I was taught. You broke it. So, fix it."

Sebastian couldn't help but wonder what had been broken within her and feared the lengths she would go to mend it.

"Why are you being like this?"

Slowly, her gaze met his, turning her back against the bars even though she was surely aware that Zev still held the blade. The light lashes of her eyes fluttered when she looked down at her fisted hands, voice low.

"I almost healed them once before."

Well, that was certainly unexpected. He did not have the impression that Astrid was on particularly good terms with these prisoners. "You did?"

"On accident, of course. It was voixili. I had called on it. I had hurt Matthias and—" Her lips thinned. "Anyways, Spirit's threads affected Serah, too, and if I hadn't stopped it, feared it, perhaps it would have saved us both from being stuck where we are now."

"Without answers, you mean?" Sebastian guessed.

"Fear will get us nowhere. We deserve to know the truth. Regardless, have you ever taken a moment to think, perhaps, they want to talk with you?"

From inside her cell, Serah bowed her head in submission.

"But what if—?" Sebastian clasped his shaking hands. "I don't have much practice."

Astrid stood at his shoulder, her head barely coming to his bicep, but it was him who felt like the small one with the force of Astrid's will towering over him. "I will help you," she assured. "Just like that time in your room. I would do it myself, but—" she pushed up her sleeve to reveal her gleaming cuff. "The key is always on my mother, and I doubt she would approve of such a venture."

Even though he knew it to be impossible, Sebastian said, "And you're sure you can't evoke voixili again?"

It was Serah and Zev who responded with such vehemence that even Astrid appeared shocked by the performance. Zev clanged the bars of their cell with Astrid's knife, his cheeks rouged with fury, his scarred head jerking back and forth. Beside him, Serah pressed herself against the bars so tightly that features of her bronzed face protruded from them, eyes wide as she gripped her fingertips into Astrid's wrist and marked two distinct letters into her skin.

NO.

"Well," Astrid said with all the confidence she could muster despite the noise that had exploded around them, "you got your answer, I would think. No voixili." She leaned closer to appraise Serah; their noses almost touched. "Are you ready?"

A new, sincere tone entered Astrid's question; it helped Sebastian release a heavy breath. Serah closed her eyes, nodded once, and backed away a step. Zev gripped her hand, everything about his expression narrowed in distrust, but Serah raised her free hand, touched her long fingers to her thumb in the shape of a circle before flicking two outwards.

Even Sebastian could read that. Okay.

Astrid didn't hesitate. She all but slammed Sebastian's palm into her stomach. "I'm here," she said. "Right here. Find her threads, and I can help direct them."

Sebastian tried to ignore the panic rushing up his throat and into his breaths. Instead, he focused on Serah, on the familiar coloring of her aging skin, the way her letters had somehow bled with soul-crushing grief when she had written your mother into his flesh. His breaths matched the rhythm of Astrid's, which vibrated against his hand. After that, it happened rather quickly. Spirit's threads arose from Serah's chest, two of them, wispy and opalescent. They floated and swirled closer until Sebastian could reach out and grasp one.

Humming thrummed through his ears in the tune of the song Astrid had sang in his room.

Under their direction, Serah's thread shifted direction, weaving up her jaw and around her cheeks. With a sharp gasp, the Scribe's lips parted and the thread dove inside.

He knew it had worked when Serah uttered a scream.

Zev caught her around the shoulders when she fell. The humming cut off abruptly when Sebastian released Spirit's thread and slumped to the floor, breathing between his knees. Astrid knelt with him.

"Is she alright?" he asked.

Astrid touched his arm, dazed. "We did it."

His head dizzied. "What was that song you hummed?"

Her head tilted in confusion. "I thought that was you—"

"Carissénas."

This time, the endearing word was not spoken by Imogene, nor by that awful voice from earlier that had wrapped around his throat and squeezed. No. This time, it came from the cell in a halting, grating whisper that sounded vulnerable and pained but also...awed.

Reverent. 

Sebastian and Astrid scrambled upright and rushed back to the barred prison.

Serah braced herself on all fours, a small puddle of crimson blood huddled beneath her chin. But when she raised her head, a small smile rose to meet her warm, brown eyes. "Carissénas," she said again.

Her voice was rough from disuse and, what Sebastian could only deduce, some sort of terrible trauma. But her words were intelligible. Sebastian pressed closer. 

"Dearest one," he translated.

Serah shook her head. "No," she corrected. "Promised one."

Promised one? Sebastian fell back on his heels, and it was Astrid who spoke for him. "What do you mean? Promised for what?"

Zev's face paled with Serah's next words:

"Yet a redeemer is born from a motherless womb,

The quill reforged to rewrite the realm's tomb.

Saviour of mortals and creatures of seven

Confronting the thief and lies that have leavened."

The recognition hit Sebastian with the force of Astrid's hand had she punched him square in the jaw. They were the words whispered in the trees when he had been stuck in Soleita, had even been the words on the scroll he had read when he had first met Queen Davina. She had asked him to translate it. He knew them.

"The Saviour's Prophecy?"

From beside him, Astrid sucked in an audible gasp. "Salveretta," she hushed. "My mother's prophecy. You know all the words of it?"

Serah bowed her head. "Not Davina's, child. Carissénas's."

Astrid rounded on Sebastian, but he had no answers to give her. He could only shake his head with a dumb, stricken grimace. "I—that can't—you must be mistaken."

A hacking cough caused Serah to spit out a few more drops of blood, but she hardly seemed bothered by it. Her attention stayed on Sebastian and Astrid, looking between them with a somber grin. Sebastian felt his stomach flip even before she spoke again.

"Salveretta is a farce," Serah rasped. "A lie Davina constructed."

A rush of pink flushed up Astrid's neck. "Salvera," she swore under her breath. "Of course." There was such an angry, vulnerable air about her that Sebastian had half-a-thought to wrap an arm around her less she break. Astrid grasped her cuff, eyes narrowed. "The whole prophecy, if you please. Say it."

Serah watched her carefully and exhaled before reciting:

"While the Mother slumbers in winter's breath

A thief will arise to conquer the rest.

Earth's kin and creations will be torn apart

Deceit, greed, and death bred from a mortal heart.

Yet a redeemer is born from a motherless womb,

The quill reforged to rewrite the realm's tomb.

Saviour of mortals and creatures of seven

Confronting the thief and lies that have leavened.

Redeemer and sinner can rise Earth or descend;

Though only one lives while the other must end."

A thick silence settled over Treason's Tower, only punctuated by Serah's weak, scraping coughs. Astrid turned to Sebastian, her eyes beseeching him to agree with her. "But that is my mother," she said. "Soleita was the thief who stole our magic; my mother confronted it. Stopped it."

Serah cleared her throat. "Davina forced herself to fit the prophecy. Even murdered her own meuredre—"

Mother, Sebastian translated the scribal word. 

A motherless womb...

"That's when it all went wrong."

Astrid crossed her arms and pursed her lips. Sebastian could feel her body trembling violently against his own, but Sebastian's brain was too busy connecting the clues. Trying to fit them all together into a neat, simple theory he could digest.

"The Purge. What truly happened?"

"Davina fashioned herself into our saviour. But, for that, she needed magic," Serah explained slowly, in between shattered breaths, "so she took it. Bled as many elemental threads from the seven realms as she could. Imprisoned them all into the Monverta."

Zev spat at Astrid's feet who merely blinked at the mess, expression pinched. "My mother is not an Author."

"She is not," Serah agreed slowly, "but she had one."

"My father?" Astrid, shockingly, snorted in disapproval. "Did she kill him, too?" She stomped the toe of her boot into Zev's wet glob of spit. "Scribes are full of lies."

Sebastian, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "And what of me?"

"If you call him Carissénas one more time—"

Serah shrugged off Astrid's incomplete threat, her gaze steady and hopeful as she looked Sebastian over. "You could be."

Sebastian frowned. What was he to make of that? But before he could ask, Astrid had already moved. She leapt to her feet like she had heard someone shout her name, angry red splotches marring her pale cheeks. Her hand went to her hip, where her weapons usually sat. Upon feeling none, she swore.

"Someone's coming."

It was Sebastian's turn to jump. "The Fae?"

"The Court of Avylon," Serah breathed. "So, it is true. They come."

Astrid grabbed the torch from the sconce. "For what?"

Serah looked up at her. "For what was taken."

"Magic?" Sebastian deduced.

But it wasn't the deep, intimidating voice of the fae warriors that interrupted them. It was Melvin, shouting out their names from the other side of the wooly, scratchy tapestry.

Astrid moved to grab Sebastian's elbow, but Serah's reflexes were quick for someone her age. She gripped his fingers. "Damage my tongue."

Sebastian faltered, sure he had misheard her. "What?"

"Unheal it, Carissénas. If Davina realizes—"

Melvin called for them again, closer.

"It will hardly matter," Astrid snapped. "You told us nothing substantially sound."

Serah leveled her with a look. "And you're willing to take that risk?"

Astrid swore again but reached for Sebastian's hand and pressed it to her abdomen once more. Sebastian's heart thumped into his throat. "I can't—!"

"You must," Astrid seethed, "or you sign her execution papers. Find the newly healed threads and cut them."

Somehow, the Scribes stayed silent through it all. By the time they met Melvin somewhere near the third cell, the only noise came from Sebastian, who felt as if he were about to retch. He gagged, but Astrid kept him upright with a strong fist against the base of his spine.

"Melvin," Astrid greeted in such a bright voice that Sebastian was positive she hoped it would distract the guard from anything else. "Glad to see you up and about."

Another guard, this one a woman, appeared from behind Melvin, a long, black braid escaping the side of her helmet. Astrid hid her surprise well. "Savon? What are you—?"

"You've both been ordered back to your rooms," Melvin interrupted.

"The second task begins at dawn," Savon added.

Carissénas or not, Sebastian doubted very much if even the truest prophecy in the seven realms could save him from this.   

- - -

The second task approaches and with it, dragons and even more answers! Jeez. Sebastian can never catch a break...

Thank you so much for reading!!