2412, Xavem 10, Briss

A loud crash echoed in the whole plain, jostling Marin out of her cot. Ilya murmured in her sleep, turning and rubbing her eyes. This woman could sleep through Cardovia burning down, seriously. Marin crawled out of her blanket, noting the harsh shadows reflecting against the sun tainting the canvases of their tent. What's going on?

She ducked out of the tent, and a streak of red blared in her periphery. The Heiress' tent was on fire, and instead of trying to stop it, most soldiers cowered behind their tents, watching something behind her. When she turned, it made sense.

The Heiress, with her bland brown hair in disarray, stood at the heart of the flames, seething at nothing and everything—all at once. Marin pushed some bystanders out of the way, cursing under her breath. What has got the Heiress so destructive this early? Moreover, why was Marin feeling responsible for this witch's moods?

"Get me Marin!" the Heiress screamed at no one. A sea of gazes settled on Marin as she wove deeper into the crowd. Slowly, forms parted until she had a direct line towards the rampaging woman. "Where is she?"

Marin bowed, her blond hair spilling past her shoulders. The tangles bobbed in and out of her vision. "I'm here, Peredeira," she said. "What's the matter?"

The Heiress whirled to her. "What's the matter?" she echoed, her voice dipping into the realms of disbelief. "I can't feel the Virtakios' presence. That's the matter. That's the only thing that should matter."

Marin pursed her lips. What happened to Xanthy this time around? The last time Marin heard from her, she's scrambling away from the Heiress' pursuit. What happened after that? How does one vanish that even the Heiress' advanced senses couldn't pick up?

"What do you think happened?" Marin asked, risking life and limb to open her mouth while the Heiress was in a bad mood.

The Heiress closed her eyes, her chest heaving with deep breaths. Her gaze swept over the audience she's drawing, but her face said nothing about what she thought of them. Let them think of her as crazy—it seemed to be the Heiress' strategy now.

"That witch unearthed the Soulcleanser," the Heiress said. "And she used it. To hide her soul somewhere I can't reach."

Marin frowned. Such a thing was possible? Then, why haven't they done it since they realized Xanthy was the Virtakios? It could have ended a lot differently for a lot of people, Marin included.

"If you please, Peredeira," Marin stepped forward and clasped her hands together. "But what is the Soulcleanser? Enlighten me if this is a task you will entrust to me."

The Heiress regarded Marin, her features now back in their passive arrangement. Then, she snapped her fingers, and the ground rumbled. More murmurs and gasps filled the space. Before Marin's eyes, the ashes that once had been the tent canvases rearranged themselves in a swirl of black smoke dotted with stars-like flecks.

A blink later, she stood inside the tent as if what she witnessed earlier was nothing but a figment of her imagination. The Heiress' soles tapped and shuffled against the grass brought back from absolute death, drawing Marin's attention to her. Instead of the hectic appearance a few seconds ago, the Heiress tugged at the lapels of her black coat. The golden medals and pins jingled as she strode towards her desk. She plopped on her cushioned seat, which was also miraculously resurrected, and twined her hands atop her stomach.

"How much do you know about thrones since the Necrom Siege?" The Heiress tilted her head to one side and swiveled her chair to face Marin completely.

Marin tamped down whatever residual awe remained in her gut. This was every-day sight for the Heiress. It should be for her too. "The Soul Spells is Carleon's throne, and those objects don't refer to the chairs monarchs sit on," she answered, the facts slipping out of her lips after learning them the hard way. "Is the Soulcleanser another throne?"

"One from Desara, in fact," the Heiress replied with a light nod. "Don't you feel cheated how we're on the water sprite territory and still not in possession of their throne?"

The thrones pulsing beneath Cardovia weren't real ones, and they were stolen underneath everyone's noses. By two disgraceful heirs, no less. Marin stuffed the sentiment down to her feet. It wouldn't do her any good. The Heiress had thrown a fit about it too, but Xanthy's disappearance seemed to tick her more.

"And the throne's magic is to...cleanse souls?"

An amused smile picked at the corners of the Heiress' lips. "And in return, it requires one soul to be offered to it," she said. "You can guess what happened to the Virtakios."

To cleanse someone's soul, Xanthy offered hers. It's both genius and foolish, but most importantly, it provided both a loss and an opportunity for the Heiress and the Sovereign. And now, Marin has to play straight into the field, getting on a race towards the final price.

"What do you need me to do?" Marin prodded.

"Find June Sylkrana," the Heiress said. "He'll be the one to lead you to where the Virtakios is. Retrieve the soul and bring it to me. We'll see about fulfilling your wish when you succeed."

Marin gave the Heiress another bow. "As you wish," she said before stepping out of the tent. Outside, the normal pace of the bustling and chatter returned. The early morning incident was more or less forgotten. If not, no one would talk about it here, not where the Heiress was literally next door. Most of them hadn't even met the Cardovic leader and only answered directly to the Magistrates.

And now, Marin gained yet another job. She had to find her own trainees at this rate, just so she had someone to relegate other trivial tasks to.

Her heart was as heavy as the steps she took. She trudged through the grassy plain, thoughts whirling at the prospect of having to go back to where she first started. Her wish would be fulfilled, and she would have to meet the people who witnessed what caused this outcome with their eyes. It was no mystery; they're not the same people whose paths coincided in Cardina. And as their paths were close to crossing again, what chaos was bound to happen?

Better yet—what did each of them stand to lose?

2412, Xavem 27, Jyda

The rippling door vanished behind Marin, locking her in the dimness of whatever this place was. Her heart leaped to her throat, and after the brusque brawl she had just survived, being ambushed in this place wouldn't be a good idea. She pounded a fist against the wall where the doorway was before. The side of her hand hit solid rock, followed by a distant hiss and the sound of cracks webbing on a surface.

What's up with this wall? Also, why was it cold?

A shiver rolled down her spine, arms, and gut. When she exhaled, her breath crystallized by her lips. Okay. That's...spooky. Where was she? It's not like that portal dropped her in World Beyond or something, right?

Right?

She just followed what the brownies did as they dragged June and the chalice away from Kymalin and April's attacks. They vanished into thin air, and Marin admittedly thought it's just because of their synnavaim. But when the trees started crashing, torn between April's winds, the weird instrument around June's neck, and the growing decay in the forests, Marin did the most sensible thing to avoid getting crushed.

She dove head-first into the nearest trunk she found. Maybe the gods decided to hear the wishes of a witch like her, but instead of head-butting a substantial tree, her entire form slipped into a sheet-like veil. Before she knew it, she was locked inside this dim room that could very much be a corridor leading to Emeria-knew-where.

And Rudik's ass, was this cold even real?

She couldn't continue pounding on the walls, could she? If she has to find out how to get out of here, she should keep moving. Bad idea, but staying still until someone found her wasn't beneficial either. Was there someone inside this cavernous nothingness? She's about to find out.

Her boots crunched against the crystal clear floor, watching her murky reflection slide across the length of the hall with her. She kept her hands to herself, careful of leaving traces of her presence and her identity. Also, the walls were biting, as if the cold seeped past her fingertips and into her veins.

Minutes or hours passed by, but she really didn't mind. Despite everything that happened and was happening in the world outside this cavern of ice, she found out she couldn't care less about that. The cold was welcome, as if she was being held in the arms of her parents. A certain nostalgic feeling, something Marin wasn't familiar with until she stared at it in the face.

A strange light came behind a bend after the nth step. With it were ringing chatter and faint bustles. She lowered her vision into the trail dimension, seeing multiple colors flitting in and out of the stable trails of the walls. So, even those were magic. The colors betrayed something of interest—souls.

There were people beyond the bend, and Marin was just about to stumble into them.

Her footsteps turned lighter, barely brushing the ground even though her flat boots were as hardy as a burly man. Her braids bounced against her exposed back as she walked briskly. She edged closer to the walls, and when she reached the bend, she slowed to a creep. Her periphery was all she needed to peek past the corner, and that's what she did.

As expected, people lumbered like ants at the foot of a set of stairs curving from the end of the corridor. A monstrous cavern gave way to stacks upon stacks of crates. People dressed in loose robes milled and wove among them, dividing their contents across several smaller crates. They're delivering those somewhere? Where? Did that mean something wider and bigger lay beyond this place? How would that affect Marin's task?

More importantly—where's June and his companions? Was this place where they disappeared to, just in a different facet? Would those multiple, rippling entrances resembling the markers in Desara's borders lead to various spots?

Just what was this place, and were the Sovereign and the Heiress aware of it? Why hadn't they considered attacking it? Yet, that was.

She crept forward a little, the tips of her boots edging closer to the first step of the stairs. A little more, and she would be spotted by the most observant fairy down there. Again, if they were even keijuis to begin with. For all Marin was concerned, they're secretly elves dressed in fairy skins.

Now, that's a stuff of nightmares. And Marin has her fair share of those.

Lowering her vision into the trail dimension once more, she studied the characteristics of those wisps of color curling from the fairies' forms. They carried the same aspects of a spritean trail, but a different blare laced around it. They weren't quite the water trails Marin chased off the markers before they ended up in places they didn't want to be. Not the same sturdy model of the earth sprites' either. Definitely not the flitting brightness that were fire sprite trails. Marin had peeked at April's trail, and this type wasn't quite the same either.

It's something Marin hadn't seen before, hinting at a different kind of sprite. But what?

A flash of magic caught her attention. She dropped out of the trail dimension to find a sprite ran her hands over the top of the smaller crate. A fine film of ice spread from where her hand had been, followed by the distinct crinkle of frost forming over a surface, just forwarded a thousand times faster.

A stone dropped into her gut when the realization clicked.

Ice sprites—the extinct race of fairies, one driven into that fate by their own kind, the keijuis. Marin had read the accounts in her rare free times, and somehow, she could relate to it. Because if they're not careful enough, history could repeat itself, and this time, the half-bloods would be at the receiving end.

And through some miracle, the ice sprites were able to hide from sight and from the collective memory of the island, and they're determined to stay that way. Otherwise, they would have resurfaced in any of the years that passed across Umazure's surface.

What right did Marin have to intrude on that?

Memories of the plumes of smoke rising from Dwanzeig's capital flashed into her mind. At some point, she could taste the ash lingering in the air. Something flashed at the corner of her vision, and for a second, she swore a column of flame rose from the cavern's floor and melted the ice from beneath the workers.

She blinked, and order returned.

It's just her imagination, but if she reported what she found here, it might not well be. The High Queen's voice blared at the back of Marin's head. Ideals are only for those who have the power to fight it. Never had it been more true to Marin. She didn't have any shred of influence, and she chose to relinquish the only right she had to the Heiress. It's the right to choose, to write her own story, and to take the path she picked for herself.

Regrets always come last. Marin should have listened then.

She had no choice but to report her findings to her comrades for the moment. Kymalin and April would call it an opportunity. June and the Soulcleanser were here, and if the Heiress had to dismantle an entire race minding their own business, she would. Marin had spent the last few months of her life to understand that.

Her fists clenched. She should at least try. Kymalin and April could see things from Marin's perspective. This war wouldn't have to touch this place if they stopped it. The Heiress and Sovereign wouldn't need to know about the existence of the ice sprites. They wouldn't have to lead entire armies at the doorstep.

Marin had spilled a lifetime of blood. She didn't need more. Cardovia and Synketros could do without that need too.

She just had to try.

Her foot skidded backwards, retracing her steps. In her haste, she misstepped, sending her slipping across the ice. Her world whirled as she slammed into the ground, a yelp flitting out of her lips. The sound bounced off the walls. It plunged the entire floor into panicked silence.

Then, someone screamed, "Intruder!", and Marin was on her feet in an instant. Who knew if they had armies of their own here. They would come for her. Her magic rushed to the surface, flooding her veins with the much-needed warmth. Sending her desperate prayers to the nonexistent gods, she summoned a pool of shadows in the dimmest parts of the corridor. There might be an anti-magic barrier in this place. There might not be. She'd find out on whatever side she'd emerge to.

So, Marin threw her weight into the portal of shadows, thinking of the forest where her comrades waited for her.