“That was over four hundred years ago!” Jularra hissed. “Four hundred years of queens having to suffer that abomination. Four hundred years!”
Leona, suspended and flattened against the bookcase, stared down at Jularra. For the first time, she seemed at a loss for how to respond.
Melcayro approached slowly.
“Jularra?”
She stood, chest heaving, her eyes trained unseeingly on a distant spot of the floor.
“Jularra,” he said again. His eyes shifted back and forth between her and Leona, and his arms extended placatingly.
“Let Leona down,” Melcayro said gently. “We need her help.”
Jularra’s chest still heaved with passion, but finally she let her gaze drift up to rest on Melcayro. He took a step back.
“Please,” he added.
After a moment, Leona began to slide gently downwards until she found her feet on the floor. The rings around Jularra, as well as the blazing mess behind her, snuffed themselves out. Jularra’s breathing slowed. Melcayro dropped his arms as she relaxed.
Jularra’s anger was slow to diminish, but as it did, she let her head fall in embarrassment.
“I… I’m sorry,” Jularra mumbled. “I’m so sorry.”
Leona didn’t reply. Instead, she brushed herself down, then bent to pick up those books which had been knocked from the shelves. Abranni stepped over to help.
“Leave them!” Leona barked without looking at her. Abranni froze. Jularra made to take her place, but Leona repeated the command.
“No! I’ll clean this up. You need to keep reading.”
Jularra hesitated and glanced at Abranni, then Melcayro. The siblings both looked lost.
“Read!” Leona shouted.
Jularra jumped, but reached down hesitantly to grab the book and searched for where she left off. Her hands trembled as she found her place, skimming back over the journal entries. Her mind was a jumble. A mess. An orgy of information with no foreplay or climax. This was going nowhere.
The Gift Gods bestow magic.
The Voidwardens and Gracewardens are the gatekeepers to death.
Detsepera needed help with the Nurudians. She made a pact.
The Voidwarden used her. Used my ancestors.
The Voidwarden…
Shit.
Like a branding iron to a horse, a hint of clarity seared Jularra’s mind.
“The Wardens were disappearing,” Jularra murmured. The others turned towards her.
“The Voidwarden was destroying the others in order to grow its power. 'To escape',” Jularra continued, speaking mostly to herself. “To escape what? The mountain? No. I’ve seen it outside the mountain before. To escape from its existence, though... bound in limbo, existing in a realm belonging to neither death nor life. It wants to live—or die. And for that, it needs my ancestors.”
Jularra began pacing. She fluctuated between whispers and shouts. Whispers for questions. Shouts for revelations. Her companions jumped at the latter and leaned in closer to hear the former, but they didn't interrupt.
“But why does it need my ancestors? To use their energy? But they’re dead. Perhaps it's using death magic to suppress the other Wardens. But what if it's outright destroying them? Maybe it's using the queens as vessels to store their power?”
Jularra's mind was racing faster than she could speak.
The Voidwarden wants to escape.
Escape life? Escape death?
Doesn't matter.
But it needs power to escape. Killing the other Wardens helped it consolidate power, somehow. Consolidate, accumulate, store, reserve - it needs a way to do all that. Hence the queens.
So, it kills the other Wardens. Then what?
Escape. But how?
“It wants to kill the Gift Gods!” she gasped to herself.
“Jularra!” Leona erupted. “Your people are entering my woods! I explicitly instructed them not to!”
Shit. Why would they do that? What's happened?
Jularra turned and bolted through the library doors, racing back down the hall with Melcayro and Abranni at her heels.
***
“What are you doing?” Jularra admonished angrily. “She told you—”
Wona swallowed and stammered into her answer. “We received a messenger from Yubik, Your Majesty. Morganon has been attacked."
“What?”
“The Torgurians, ma’am,” Wona said again, more urgently this time.
Jularra kicked the pine needles at her feet.
“Fuck!” she screamed.
Her thoughts whirled furiously. “I need to get back,” she whispered. “We all need to get back.”
***
“Jularra?”
Melcayro rode up beside her. The fresh Torgurian tracks in the dirt glued her eyes to the ground and locked down her mind, preventing anything coherent from passing through. Only rage brewed in her soul.
A massive, splintering crack rang out in the distance as a structure inside Morganon’s walls gave way. Abranni joined her brother at Jularra’s side. Neither spoke. Jularra slowly raised her head.
Ahead of them, across the river, lay Morganon’s smoking bones. The Torgurians had been thwarted, but just barely. Jularra and the others watched as Acorilinian soldiers piled corpses together. Smoke drifted across the valley like that produced by some of the largest forest fires of years past. Faster-moving billows of smoke revealed some surviving, active fires. Muffled shouting could be heard from inside the city. Guards and citizens screamed for help. Survivors trapped in rubble yelled their location.
“Come on,” Jularra said, nudging her horse onward.
The group trotted after her, past destroyed siege equipment and dead Torgurians, discarded weapons and dead Acorilinians. Arrows jutted from the scarred dirt. Still Jularra's companions said nothing. The Spire and Bedrock traveling with Jularra let an occasional curse slip, but they too were mostly silent, struck dumb by what had happened to their home.
The returning queen and her cohort reached the northern bridge. Those piling bodies outside stopped to stare at Jularra. Their shock and exhaustion made them forget to address their queen properly. Her anger made her forget to care. Word of her return spread quickly across the outer grounds, through the damaged gatehouse and into the city. More citizens, dazed and worn down with sorrow, trickled out to meet Jularra; they were soon overtaken by bloody, dirty guards who sprinted out to update their queen.
“Your Majesty!”
The ranking captain fell to a respectful knee, breathing rapid, shallow gulps of air. Jularra clenched her jaw to stop it quivering, and knelt opposite him.
“The city is secure,” the captain gasped. “The Torgurians… I've never seen such brutality. It was... relentless. We wore each other down, then they withdrew. We don’t know if they’re regrouping, or…”
The
