Jularra nodded as she made her way back to the stump. “Or, like you said, I could chase motive, and look in to who might have hired him.” She sat down and started pinching at her cooked rabbit. “The assassin’s origins are probably unrelated to his employer's.”
“Right,” Vylas confirmed. “So, who are the suspects?”
Jularra laughed. “Within or outside our borders?” she said, licking meat juices from her fingers.
Vylas stopped eating mid-bite. “What? Who of our people would want you dead?”
She sighed and finished chewing. She looked up to Vylas and back to her hands before answering.
“Plenty, I’m afraid. It wasn’t always so, but it is now.”
Vylas waited for her to expand.
“The land is in a bad state. There’s sickness. Challenges to alliances. And, of course…” Jularra tossed her rabbit down. Her shoulders fell, and she slowly lowered her head into her hands. “I haven’t produced an heir.”
Vylas continued chewing, but slowly. He lifted his eyes to the sky while silently doing arithmetic, then he placed his food down as well.
“Oh, my,” he offered softly. He looked at the dirt, blinking quickly. “How long do you have to…”
“About a year,” she said, deflated. “I’m twenty-seven, so… a year to get pregnant and produce a daughter that will be ten at the time of her ceremony. Ten years. Just when I’ll be getting used to being a mother, it will be time to leave her.”
“Jularra,” Vylas attempted, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t think about that right now. It serves you no purpose.”
Jularra sat still, locked in thought, looking forward into a horizon of nothingness.
“It’s all I’ve thought about since I watched my mother die. Ever since the crown passed to me, Vylas. Even when I brought you my reliquary to be blessed—not even a full day after emerging from the mountain—I was already cold and dark with the knowledge that I would have to go through that someday.”
Vylas said nothing, but attempted to pat her shoulder again. She stood back up instead.
“It’s not dying before my time, or even death itself that bothers me. That hasn’t troubled me since I was a child. What digs down to the core of my being is the knowledge that our people, our country—not just me and my descendants—are held captive by this unbreakable blood oath. We have no choice in a matter that was decided in haste by one person hundreds of years ago. Our people were saved once, then, but are still hostage to the Voidwarden. And what good has come of it? We are a diseased, poor state, a bankrupt land ruled by a queen who is held in contempt by many of her people and much of the world outside our borders!”
Vylas rubbed his face and pinched gently under his eyes.
“I understand,” he started. “I may not feel it from your perspective, but it all makes sense. Your feelings are justified.”
He stood up and walked to Jularra. A strong gust of mountain air tore through the woods.
“But you must hear me when I say,” he continued, “whatever was done then, and has taken place since, was not done in vain. You are here. Our people are here. Things may not be the best they ever have been, but you—and our people—persist. Our culture is respected. Our skills our envied. Our warriors are feared." He paused. "The sacrifices of your line are respected. Whatever happens between now and the end of our country, or the end of the world, will be supported. You have plenty of time to take action on the things you can control, and time to decide how you will face those things you can’t.”
Jularra stared intently at Vylas as he spoke, simultaneously afraid of the future and reassured by his encouragement. Tears crept up on her, though she wasn’t surprised; for years, Vylas had smuggled stowaways of love and concern into her heart on clandestine wagons of wisdom and sincere advice. A bit of hope had opened the gate.
Jularra blinked away the tears and looked back into the increasing darkness of the woods. Her mind had filled with the beginnings of action, but there were too many layers to the web of her thoughts. Her mind raced and her heart beat quickly. She was distracted. She missed the signs.
***
Vylas’ first clue was the wind. The second sign was the wave of petrichor, the smell of rain making contact with the forest, that followed the breeze. Rain was coming. The final sign was the infinitesimal premonition of a lightning strike. Before his brain had finished registering the premonition, Vylas shoved Jularra out of the way and shot his hands towards the sky. He caught the bolt just above the forest canopy.
As a practitioner of weather magic, Vylas could interact with the elements, and to a small degree, influence them. The energy behind a lightning strike was far too great for any weather magician to stop, but Vylas was able to slow it down, and work to redirect it away from the clearing where his home was. He couldn’t predict if it would have originally struck him, Jularra, or the house, but it was too close for comfort.
The weight of the bolt felt like hundreds of pounds on his wrists. Closer and closer it came as it forced Vylas to his knees. Jularra, Vylas’ student and fellow practitioner of weather magic, scrambled up beside him and offered up her own energy in assistance. It still would never be enough to stop the bolt entirely, but it provided a pinch of extra time for them to decide their next action. The area, which had been mostly overrun by dusk just moments before, grew brighter and brighter with each creeping inch of lightning. The approaching rain had also arrived, pelting the leaves of the nearby forest, sounding like a gargantuan symphony made up only of little cymbals. The rip of thunder that followed the lightning remained sustained in the sky, growing louder.
Vylas shouted to
