Chapter 48: A Queen’s Duty.

Ren yawned, loudly. The sound of it filled our small room. It was the third time she had yawned in the span of three minutes. “Why the hell are we all here again?” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist. “It’s not even past the first bell. It’s too early to do anything.”

Ash had found the three of them with surprising ease. I had set her on the task, but I had assumed it would take longer than it did. It seemed I was the only one of us who would get lost if they took a few steps outside.

The five of us stood in our room. Corin was between Ren and Edda, his face aimed at the floor. That hadn’t changed. Ren stood half in front of him with her arms folded, between him and us. That had changed. Edda stood on his other side.

“We want to try again,” Ash said. “With Corin. We’ve practiced a bit since yesterday.”

Ren’s face hardened. I watched her jaw tighten and her shoulders set. She stepped further in front of the boy. “You’ve practiced since yesterday.” She said dryly. “This has to be some kind of joke.” Her voice had lost its usual volume. It was low and sharp instead. “Lysanthia already tried. She already said she couldn’t do it. So what the hell is this? You think it’s going to be different after…what, one day? That doesn’t even begin to make any sense.”

I raised a hand. “This time will be different.”

Ren looked at me and then she looked back at Corin. It was Edda who stepped forward. The blue-haired girl’s expression did not change, but her voice carried a weight that her face would not show. “What exactly will make this time different?” There was an edge to her words, no matter how she hid it.

I looked at Ash. The faintest smile found me before I could stop it. “It is simple,” I said. “This time, Ash will be doing the work that matters. I will merely be assisting her.”

The two girls were silent. I doubted that either of them understood. I did not explain further. I stepped toward Corin and looked down at the boy. He did not raise his head.

“There will be danger to this,” I said. “There will be risk. I suspect there will be pain as well, more than there was last time.” I folded my arms. “But the chance of success is real. Are you willing to accept that much, child?”

I watched. The boy looked up at me. A small tremor went through him. It started at his wrist, and died at his elbow. It was one I recognized, because I had been hiding my own. The Ember Core hummed beneath my ribs.

The boy nodded, slowly. I thought of Shera. Of a woman in a dark hut who had accepted a risk that was not nothing, so she may get everything. Perhaps I was starting to understand something about humans after all. About the strength that even the weak could carry. I turned to Ash. “Well then, Ash. Shall we begin? We should-“

“Wait.” Ren’s voice cut through. “How do I know you two won’t make this worse?” Edda reached for her arm. Ren shook her off. “You both better be serious about this. If not, then this is fucked up. You can’t just…you can’t just keep saying something that doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice had somehow gotten both quieter and louder at the same time. “I was willing to try this once but getting my hopes dashed twice? You better not. Or I’ll never forgive you.”

I had something cutting to say. I looked at Ren and did not say it. “You don’t have to trust me. Neither will you have reason to forgive me.”

Ren opened her mouth. The redness in her face only grew. A small hand reached out, grabbed onto her shoulder. Corin spoke first. His voice was quiet. “Ren…If there’s a chance, I’ll take it.” He looked at Ren. “That’s enough for me. Please.”

Ren stared at him. Something passed between the three of them that I could see the shape of but did not fully understand. Ren’s jaw worked. She stepped back. Edda looked at me and nodded.

“Well,” I said. “It’s decided then.”

Corin sat on his knees in front of us. Ash and I sat in front of him. Before we began, I looked at all three of them.

“What you see in this room,” I said, “you are never to speak of. To anyone. Ever. Perhaps I should have said this last time as well. I am saying this now. You will agree to this, or we will not start.”

Ren and Edda looked at each other. Their shared look did not quite convey the weight of what I asked them. The boy did not look anywhere but straight ahead. The two girls nodded. Corin only faintly shook his head. That would have to be good enough.

I turned to Ash. “You do not yet have the fine control for this on your own. You are going to follow me.” I held up my right hand. A wisp of Ruin trickled from my fingers into Corin. The boy flinched. I followed it with a wisp of Cradle from my left. White light pooled behind the black, crossing his skin into the flesh beneath. “Can you feel it? With your senses, you should be able to.”

Ash leaned closer. Her eyes narrowed. She nodded slowly. “I will find each place,” I said. “I will show you the place where the wrongness and the channel are the same. I will need your power there.”

“I can do that, I think.” Ash said slowly. The Hero looked uncertain. I did not know why. I would not ask something of her I was not sure she could do.

“Good. I will erase what you have cut, and fill the gap that remains. You need to only follow.”

This would take long. The boy had hundreds of small and twisted channels, and each of them would need to be corrected one by one. Perhaps Ash might manage such a thing in one stroke someday, but I knew she could not yet. Still, with our three powers, we could do this. I was sure of it.

I had done many complex things in my long life. Never with another. Never where the critical step rested in someone else’s hands. To know that I must place my hopes on another should have filled me with dread. It did not. If it was Ash, then it would not.

I took a deep breath, and focused. I guided a wisp of Ruin to the first knot. “There,” I whispered. I did not know why I whispered.

Ash nodded and leaned in close. She raised her left hand and drew a line in the air. Slowly. Too slowly. The line passed through the space above Corin’s arm and nothing happened. I felt the wrongness sitting exactly where it had been, untouched.

“Ash,” I murmured. “Try again. Envision it in your mind. This is more difficult because you cannot see directly, but this is something you can do.”

Ash slowly nodded as she drew again. This time, I felt the wrongness shudder. I felt it through the Ruin.

“Again. You were closer this time.”

Ash’s third attempt caught. The wrongness peeled away from the channel beneath it, and the separation was not clean. Corin grunted. The sound was sharp. Ren stepped forward. Corin held up his hand without looking. “This is nothing.”

I felt the wrongness through Ruin. It tried to claw back toward the channel it had been separated from. Perhaps it was a thing alive. I had suspected I would find something like this. It was good that I’d had the Requiem ready. Ruin erased the wrongness before it could enter the boy again, and I filled the gap that remained with the Cradle.

The impression came. The same one from yesterday, of watching two backs growing smaller on a long road. I ignored it. The first channel cleared. There were hundreds more to go.

The second was harder. The wrongness here was thicker, more deeply fused. The channel hardly resembled one at all. I guided Ash to it and she drew her line. The cut was imprecise. Her slice caught a sliver of healthy channel alongside the wrongness. Corin hissed between his teeth.

“Focus, Ash.,” I said. “Only what I show you. Nothing else. Feel the line of my power.”

Ash nodded slowly and adjusted herself beside me. Her hand trembled once and then steadied. The next cut was cleaner. I burned what she severed and filled the gap.

The third channel. The fifth. The eighth. The corrections I needed to give Ash grew fewer. By the tenth, she needed none at all. Her hand moved where I guided, and the wrongness parted from the channel beneath it perfectly. I followed behind power, burning what was severed, healing what remained. The wrongness wasn’t always there. Sometimes Ash simply severed a channel that grew in a tangle, and I had to join what she cut behind. That was perhaps more difficult than the rest.

The rhythm found us, Ruin and Bloom and Parting. Ash leaned closer. I leaned into her. At some point we stopped speaking entirely. There was no need. I would find the knot, and she would know, and she would cut, and I would follow.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The impressions kept coming. I could not stop them, not with this much of my power flowing through the boy. A hand pressing against a window, watching rain. The weight of a pack too heavy for small shoulders. A woman’s voice, saying his name the way one says something fragile. His mother. The same wrongness had been in her. And her mother before her. And her mother before that.

The Ember Core ground inside me. The pain was a constant thing, but my focus was elsewhere and it found me through the cracks. A flare of pain here, sharp enough that my hands stuttered. A twitch there, one that made me take in a sharp breath. Ash must have felt them. I knew because her shoulder pressed harder into mine, and it was warm. I breathed through them. We continued.

The twentieth channel. The thirtieth. The fiftieth. My Essence was starting to thin. Each use of Ruin or Bloom cost me little compared to what I had, but I needed to use them often. Constantly and precisely. The wrongness in this boy ran deeper than I had realized. Each knot I found led to three more, branching beneath the ones I had already cleared.