Chapter 38: Reasons.

The chamber was quiet. Whatever pressure Ash’s Essence had left in the air was settling. The crystal walls still held their light in shifting patterns, though the patterns moved slower now, as if the room itself was catching its breath. Ash sat against the near wall. Her breathing came slow and long, and some of the colour had left her face. Perhaps I should not have asked her to flare her Essence so soon after what she had done to get it.

“We should leave,” Ash said. “I have my core. We can come back tomorrow, when you’re-“

“No.”

Ash looked at me. “Are you sure?”

“I have not formed mine. I will not leave until I have.” I said.

Ash held my gaze for a moment. Then she nodded and leaned back against the crystal wall. “Okay. I guess then we’ll-“

“You may leave,” I said. “This may take some time.”

“I won’t leave without you.” She said it the way one states the color of the sky. I did not argue. I had learned by now that arguing with this particular brand of stupidity was a waste of breath.

I closed my eyes and drew mana inward. The chamber’s supply was still reasonably thick despite what we had both taken from it. More than full enough to form the two Essences I would require. I reached for both of my marks. Requiem Essence formed in my right arm -cold and tasting of things long past. Cradle Essence formed in my left -warm, and gentler than I deserved. I fed them both into my core. The two met. The Requiem’s carving tore through the Cradle’s. The Cradle’s tore through the Requiem’s. Pain bloomed behind my ribs, sharp enough that my breath caught.

I hadn’t truly expected this to succeed. I tried different ratios of the two powers. Far more Requiem, with barely a thread of Cradle. The carving process held for five seconds, longer than before yet still not long enough. Then the Cradle found it, and everything came apart. I coughed. Something warm touched my lip. I wiped it away without looking. A Queen did not bleed. I was running out of things to test.

“Stop doing that to yourself.”

I opened my eyes. Ash was watching me. She had not moved from her place against the wall. “What?” I said.

“Hurting yourself. It’s painful, isn’t it?”

The question made no sense to me. “How else am I supposed to experiment?”

Ash stared at me for a long moment. The look on her face was one I could not parse. It was softer than pity and sharper than concern. “Just do it outside,” she said.

“Outside?”

“Don’t test them inside your body. Fire them at each other out here, where they can’t tear you apart. At least, that’s how I’d do it.”

I stared at her. The suggestion was so obvious that I should have thought of it myself, and so simple that I almost dismissed it on principle. A Queen’s methods should not be improved by her retainer’s common sense. And yet. “That is perhaps not a terrible idea,” I said.

I rose, created distance from the nearest wall, and raised both hands. In my right hand, I gathered Ruin. In my left hand, I gathered Bloom. I drew Essence through both marks and let it build. I fired black and white flames into each other.

Black and white flame met in the air between my palms. The world warped around the point of contact. Light bending, shadows twisted, the crystal walls threw back reflections that split my silhouette into black and white copies across the stone. The two flames roiled against each other, coiling, devouring, being devoured, until there was nothing left but a faint heat on my skin and the smell of something that was almost sweet.

How interesting. I did it again. I used more Ruin and Less Bloom. The black consumed the white in an instant, then guttered out. I reversed the ratio. The white swallowed the black, hung in the air for half a breath, and dissolved. Equal measures of both, naturally, lasted the longest. The two forces grinded against each other in a spiral of destruction. It was utterly pointless.

Ash had leaned in close. I had not heard her approach. She watched the point where the two flames met with an intensity that surprised me. The light played across her face in alternating waves of the two colors. “They look beautiful,” she murmured.

“Of course they do. They are my power.”

We watched in silence for a time. I fired them again from different angles, using different rhythms. I could make them meet. I could not make them stay. Eventually, Ash spoke again. “Have you given it any thought?” Ash asked. Her voice was low. “To what the man said. About using only one mark, I mean..”

“That is out of the question.”

“Why?”

I looked at her. Slowly, I asked, “Are you really asking me that?”

Ash smiled. It was faint and brief. “Suppose not.”

There was silence then, one filled only by my two powers burning away at each other. I did not know why I spoke, but I did. “I need power,” I said. I fired Ruin and Bloom at each other again. I watched them die. “You have seen this new world with me. Seen all the strange things within it. Only a fool would not reach for power when it is so readily available to them.” I paused. “And perhaps reaching for power is simply who I am.” I gathered more Essence.”I will not halve myself, as that small man suggested. I will not tie one of my own arms behind my back.”

I started to say something else. Something about the Cradle. About wanting- My mouth closed. The words would not leave. I fired Ruin harder, and Bloom rose to meet it. The collision warped the air and I watched it die. “Power,” I said again. “I need all of it. I will have all of it.” Ash nodded slowly. Her gaze had weight to it. My gaze drifted past the collision and found the far wall of the chamber, where I did not see it.

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The experimentation continued, and nothing changed at all. An hour passed. Or perhaps it only seemed to, in this room. There was only destruction, the kind that left nothing behind at all. What else had I expected, from me?