Terrianis ravenously gulped the air as he rose suddenly from the chair, a pain akin to searing clasps tearing his flesh coursed across his being and with the same haste, subsided as he neared towards the edge of the round platform and stared into the ethereal lake of astral waters. His polychromatic eyes stared and stared, looked for the tall and hideously magnificent figure but found the vile presence no longer looming over his lands. The harrowing of all the folk came at last to an end, though he felt annoyed at The Oracles failing to predict this harrowing event.

  “No one is infallible.” The words of his predecessor, his father Primuinis rang in his head as he ran his fingers across his flourishing ashen black hair tumbling down his shoulder and beyond in fine and smooth waves, Terrianis’s shimmering claw and tendrils growing from their slim cavities, invading his clammy skin and their soul, tearing out the last speckles of pain ailing his being. As much as it annoyed him, the sudden attack, it also provided relief and forced a genuine smile onto his face for the first time in eighty years.

  “Have we walked into the web of spiders or Her nature bested Her reasoning.” Terrianis pondered before his arkhaine points flared up, mana streamed across the vast network of anima veins forming as his mind formed silent syntaxes manifesting him beyond the frescoed walls of the throne room, beyond the lavish and etched golden gate.

  Putrescence, all too familiar to them lingered in the once marvelous white halls and corridors of the Radiant Keep. Servants wailed on the floor before they noticed their quasi-divine liege manifesting from his lair, and composed themselves as much as they could allow in their haggard states. The proud members of the Imperial Praetoreath meandered, stepped on the precipice of total exhaustion, but with a sudden rejuvenation walked once more proudly and with dignity as their eyes glanced upon his magnificent form adorned with a regal, listless expression. A loud snap echoed through the open corridors, separated from the inner gardens by thick, fluted columns and a translucent wave washed out the bile tainting the Radiant Keep.

  The first snap sent soothing waves across the whole structure, wiping away scars and indentations of body and soul in equal measures. Even their saccharine scented sweat vanished though it brought not the pleasant experience of a warm bath after a long work’s day. Instead, they all felt like thousand viscous hands drawn and dragged filth, sweat from their bodies and souls.

  The second snap compelled he floor to swig down the corpses, the blood as Terrianis walked towards his younger brother Kaerhil, High Praetor of the Imperial Praetoreath still somewhat tense as a bowstring. whose iridescent steel-gray gaze still held disturbance within its hessite, draconic pearls.

  Kaerhil stood resplendently in his multicolored Vivuirith Panoply composed of the living plates, all symmetrical and angular, shifting as much grace and fluidity as his body beneath as he knelt his honed, massive form before Terrianis. Light brilliantly traversed its smooth, enameled surface where vibrant, rich shades dragged behind the silvery rays of the Lunarius. Helmet which covered his haggard and handsome visage he lifted beneath his armpits, letting the short brown hair of his with hints of steel-gray like his scales tumble a bit beyond his tapering jawline where jagged tendrils formed from his scales, sinuously stretching up on to his oblong visage.

  “Contact Tiberiluth, restore order in the streets immediately and capture any and all remaining cultists!” Terrianis words laced in maghia cleansed the remaining woes of Kaerhil’s soul, refreshed as if splashed by a bucket of icy cold water.

  “What about the Keep my Elhyrissiar?” Asked Kaerhil, his mind and thoughts still reeling in the chaos they were thrown into hours before.

  “Leave the Keep to us. Time is of the essence in these harrowing hours. Our adversary may have been defeated, but the master still lurks like a coward, with an aim wholly different.” Terrianis said,

  for the first time since his ascension – he felt unease that made him conscious of his own beating heart and the sweat beading down his skin.

  Sweat began trickling down Terrianis’s temples, his heart increased its pace as his drawn his breath shallower. He gazed out to the courtyard where exotic vegetations hushed strange lullabies, wind swept into open hallway, the lustrous, smooth cloth rustled beneath Kaerhil’s plates as he awaited, sensing more. “And most importantly, find Aurelithae. Make sure she returns safe and sound!” Kaerhil nodded, as he took off disappearing amongst his equally confused kin and servants.

  “I believe father, that last order was in vain.” Like vagrant winds, the whispery words passed furtively towards and into his mind, and as he glided past a turn, the owner of those sly words slithered forth the thick, vicious shadows. Sussuovar stepped forth, not a single sound came as he revealed himself. Tall and lean, draped in black and dark blue robes of an eastern needlecraft wrapped about his form, its broad sleeves locked, his eyes like a foxes shuttered whilst an enigmatic, faint smile adorned his smooth visage bereft of any hair. Indigo scales grown about the tips and trims of his long, slender ears, slithering onto his sharply angled jawline where they reached not his chin, instead bled downwards onto his slender, subtly muscled fair neck.

  “Spare us your sly words my dear son. Speak at once on the news carried by your shadows!” Terrianis spoke with an austere tone, his voice deepened and echoed–Sussuovar even noticed two other mingling with his own. And for a meager moment, Terrianis noticed a faint curve at the right corner of his thin lips.

  Sussuovar remained silent contemplating his words as said shadows whom accompanied Aurelithae into the depths of the Cathedral perished. Just like how most of his agents spread within the New Dawn turned silent, possibly even dead during the spreading of Dumath’s domination of the capital.

  “As you wish father. What I mean is that brother Albron already picked her up after she stumbled out and collapsed before the gate of the great cathedral. They shall be here in a few moments, if I had to guess, probably near her room.” Even though the few servants who shook by the tide of his voice, Sussuovar remained calm and listless in his tone as he relayed the information. Wasting no more words on him, Terrianis vanished into the air, to the slight relief of the servants who struggled to breathe in his dominating presence.

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  “Fetch the Imperial Menders! Send them to the Household Tower.” Sussuovar turned to the nearest aevhe handmaiden and issued his orders, then turned towards the direction of The Household Tower. “The pact is weakening.” He whispered before the shadows swallowed his slender form, and he disappeared in the emptied corridor.

  *****

  Strong gusts of wind swept through the courtyard before the Household Tower, Colciorh massive form blocked out the rays of the Lunarius, quickly shrunk as the dragon with feathery scales and a long beaked head adorned with majestic stag like horns landed upon the marble podium in the center, adorned with the painting of a kin of his. Terrianis waited below, his sumptuous robes and long hair of a deep, smothered darkness left behind by long-dead fires remained equilibrious, behind him footsteps mingled with the flapping of the large wings as the servitors of the keep rushed, led by Akaerith wearing worry on her lovely, pale complexion framed by smooth flowing side locks of a deep, vibrant red.

  From the saddle, Albrion waited not for Colciorh to land, he leapt and landed with loud clangs as the symmetrical pieces of his black and golden bordered panoply shook as his soles violently touched upon the polished marble. A grimly accusing countenance he wore, aimed at Terrianis who noticed the frail form of Aurelithae sprawling in his arms, limp like a corpse, yet her chest still rose, bringing calm upon his sudden unease and an old feeling he nearly forgot about.

  “Make us way.” He turned and yelled at the servitors who froze with fear as the air grew suffocating in his presence.

  Though he quickly adjusted himself, focused his will upon Aurelithae whose fair skin and scales glowed ethereally at a moment’s notice. A few tumbled as Albrion cut through them, started climbing the steps when suddenly he found himself along with Terrianis within the room of Aurelithae near the top floor. Needing not to be commanded, Albrion laid her onto the bed whilst Terrianis loomed on the other side, listless outwardly, within toiling as he peered at the sleeping face of his daughter. “You have done well son. Leave, you have your duty for the city in chaos.”

  “There’s no more chaos lurking in the city. My praetors and the legion made sure of that already. So let me stay, give me this one blessing.” Glancing at him in the warm glow of candles and the stones hanging from the filigreed chandelier, Terrianis noted the scars upon his son, how his black tinted red blood trickled from his left eye shut down, tainting his sharp and high resting cheeks, smoke still rose from his sides, mixing the vile stenches of burned flesh and silk into one. Yet even with all these agonies, he ignored his command, walked and knelt before the bed, his expression tortured from the peril his sister was put into by the foolishness of their father.

  “No one steps inside–besides us!” He turned to Albrion and gave his order upon sensing the approach of Akaerith and Aurelithae’s other handmaidens and the few remaining imperial praetors selected to keep vigil within The Household Tower where his siblings, children and mates lived.

  A nostalgic feeling came over him as he looked upon the countenance of his son, restored when his conviction reached his heart. Albrion held the same pain in his gaze as Augermil, when he Terrianis carried in his arms the corpse of their beloved sister, Umbreniel whose lush, deep, and warm purple hair with reddish undertones came undone for the last time in her life. Arrows still protruded forth her corpse, gnawing through golden plates and purple silken. Just remembering the feeling of her corpse weight nearly broke his calm, austere fa?ade and Terrianis himself nearly wept seeing Umbreniel reflected in Aurelithae’s dreaming visage.

  “Was your gamble worth it Father?” His son’s words tainted by his anger astounded Terrianis. For a moment, he contemplated snapping his neck for the insolence, but the notion quickly subsided strangely, and after moments of silence he tried to open his mouth, but they clashed against the dam formed by his remorse. “How many more have to perish before you become our father and not our monarch?” Came the second question with no answer. This time he ignored it, knowing that like his siblings, not all his children was destined to see their work done. Some were only meant to be the building blocks.

  “We did not wish for this. And you are right… when she shall awaken…” Silence draped over and snuffed the words out, materialized by his own ineptitude regarding his feelings. “We want you to keep your eyes on her, even when the day comes, she flies out from the nest.”

  Leaned over her face, his palms locked onto her soft cheeks, Terrianis pondered as strange rumbles shook his soul, his body from within. A serpent slithered around his throat, slowly applying pressure to it as he wished to refute his son’s words, that he felt pain for a moment when he learnt of Moirstyria’s passing, when he saw Aurelithae sleeping in his arms, before she first opened her wonderful eyes and smiled at him, laughed with him. “

  “I shall do so.” Albrion said his arms crossed and leaning against the wall, his eyes glowing with his own remorse and regret, masked by the necessity of his own goals.

  Terrianis shut his lids as he parted away from the bed, towards its foot. His arms slowly rose high and Albrion remained silent, as he sensed a tender warmth spread first within the room. Though no scar remained on his hulking form casting its shadow across the floor whilst his dense black crown nearly reached the frescoed ceiling, Albrion still let out a moan muffled by his softly pressed lips, as he felt the dawn particles flock towards the canopied bed, slowly manifesting for the naked eyes in thin seams forming sharp cornered walls, translucent and a warm golden with speckles of cerulean floating around, occasionally forming into the three and four pointed geometrical runes of protection and healing.

  Though what ailed Aurelithae, neither of them truly knew. Albrion believed she was on the verge of being devoured by the mindless Rage of Acheryoth after exhausting herself in a fight against a primordial intelligence as great as Maerhia herself – if not more so. Terrianis apprehended a bit more, though it was his first time witnessing one whose soul got detached from their body. Hence, he reflexively erected a barrier doing no more than keeping Aurelithae’s body in its current state healed of its battle wounds until he found a way the draw her back into her mortal vessel.

  A sigh escaped her, and it eased both equally for the moment.

  “Please awaken. Please come back to me, to us my dearest whelp.” Terrianis whispered kneeling besides the bed and with his own voice, poisoned by his own fatherly worries and hopes, his warm breath brushed against her smooth and lustrous skin visible bereaved of its warmth, turning pale and white as polished marble near the corners. A peculiar and worrisome change, further confusing him. Though it seemed, the change came and ceased. “We… I need you!” Terrianis whispered, laced by his sealed away parental emotions.

  Albrion looked at him as his sharpened ears picked up on the whispery words, slightly astounded hearing them part for the first time from Terrianis’s lips. But he remained wordless, confused by his own feelings and loyalties he wished to mull on until she awoke.