The Flame of Wrath (16 page)

             
“Could it have been a poison which you haven't encountered before?” Aurea asked almost desperately.

             
“Perhaps,” he murmured, “but I doubt that and even if it were, unless we isolated specifically what that poison was, we would be unable to create an antidote.”

             
Slowly, Aurea sank into a chair. She sat rigidly within it, staring forward to the woman in her bed.

             
The doctor crossed his arms. His gaze fell heavily upon the sleeping brunette. “It's almost as though she's suffering from---” He stopped and shook his head. No, he thought, he was just being silly.

             
“What?” Aurea asked. She looked up at the doctor who wearily pinched the bridge of his nose. He squinted his eyes while attempting to push the fatigue from his mind.

             
When he opened his eyes once more, he found Aurea's intense blue eyes focused on him. He sighed. Reluctantly, the doctor finished what he had meant to say. “The generations before us believed that whenever there was an ailment which medicines could not cure, it was a matter of the heart, a matter of the soul. Based on what you and your Knights shared with me regarding the battle, I can certainly see how that would apply in this case. She lost her home, her entire life as she knew it.”

             
Seeing the wave of sadness wash over his Queen made the man flinch slightly. In a need to give her hope, he tried again. “She's fighting valiantly that much is clear. Perhaps her body is struggling to find its way out of the ruin of her old life to the happiness she will have with you in her new life.”

             
Aurea nodded. The look upon her face was that of a forced hopefulness, more for appearance's sake than a true belief. “Perhaps you're right,” she said. “Thank you, doctor.”

             
The doctor bowed respectfully. As he left, his expression voiced that he felt he had done more harm than he had good with his words.

             
Aurea allowed the silence to again wash over her. She drowned within it. Her shoulders lost their regal poise. Slowly she began to break under her fears.

             
Her head lowered. Her trembling hands rose to mask her frightened face. She sobbed pitifully into her hands. This was what she had always feared. She had found true happiness, true completion and now it would be stolen from her. She would be alone after having finally known what it was to never have the fear of loneliness again.

             
Anger flashed inside her. She drew in a hissed breath, biting off her tears. Quickly, she wiped her face clean. She sniffled then stood.

             
Aurea tenderly crept into bed. She took the shivering brunette into her arms. She held her close. “Autumn, why can't I fix this?” she whispered into sweat-laden hair. Tears created a world of hazy discontent.

             
“All my life, I've done what was necessary to gain more power. Now, I'm the most powerful person in all of Pyros and it means nothing because it isn't enough to make you well again.” She lovingly kissed the top of Autumn's head. Her lips rested there, refusing to relinquish the breath she had inhaled in the moments that Autumn had unconsciously held her breath. It was only when a labored breath was released that Aurea allowed herself to breathe again.

             
“My title wasn't even enough to permit us to marry,” she voiced bitterly. Her eyes narrowed hatefully on the distance, seeing the faces of those she hated. She saw men in crimson hoods with untrustworthy scarlet eyes. With unfailing clarity, she saw a red-eyed Soren dressed in white. Now, she saw a new face among the others. She saw Angelos III denying her her bride.

             
She scowled. “Why can't I save you the way that you saved me?”

             
No one had ever fought for her the way that Autumn had. It had not been for politics or hidden agenda. Autumn had done it for the sheer unabashed complexity of love.

             
“Being Queen isn't enough, but what is more?”

             
Aurea tenderly brushed her fingertips along the length of Autumn's jaw. “I want to give you the world,” she uttered. She felt consumed by a bravery she might not have known if the brunette were not lost in recuperative sleep. “A kingdom isn't enough. You deserve so much more.” She lovingly let her eyes wander over the supple curves of Autumn's lips. “Somehow....” she vowed. “Somehow I will give you the world as our----” Her eyes lifted slowly. They fell on the painted mural along the far wall. It held a meticulously painted vision of Pyros.

             
The map was large and grand. Throughout Pyros, many provinces were clearly marked. Stunning pictures symbolized the proud people within neatly plotted lines. The outermost regions of the land existed in a sort of limbo beyond the reach of either Pyros or Lucidia. A seemingly endless millennium had found that land enjoying a sort of neutrality. Upon its surface, Pyrosians and Lucidians could coexist if only for a short time because the land was holy.

             
“The land of Logos,” she exhaled. 

             
Beyond the land of Logos was the home to Pyros' eternal enemy, Lucidia. Her eyes did not remain upon those lands long. Her gaze returned to the lush green lands with flowing rivers and waterfalls to bring tears to the eyes at their splendor, where mythical creatures thrived and dreams crept over the earth in an eternal fog. It was a land where myths foretold the dead could be resurrected and the dying could be healed, but only if Logos deemed the dead worthy.

             
An odd sort of coming together began to happen within her mind. The dreams which Aurea had known her entire life, the dreams for something magnificent and splendid glowed with the brilliance of newly-given life. She could make it a reality. And now, lost in epiphany she understood how.

             
Her voice contained a dreamy air. In that moment, she dared to finish the thought which stirred her ambitions like a potent elixir. “The world will be our empire.”

********

              From across what the Pyrosians knew to be the End of the World, a castle of Gothic dreams and magical whispers housed a great power though to those who might look upon her, she appeared silent and frail.

The Emissary to a God, she was the ruler of Lucidia, the land of never-ending winter, the land of Sacred Tears. The years had left her as the witness to so much, but in the hundred years that she had existed as the Vessel through which their deity spoke, she had never sensed anything possessing the darkness of what she sensed now.

The old Queen leaned forward. Her body slumped beneath the weight of her visions.

The Sisterhood of Tears rushed closer as if to catch her before she fell, but the Queen cast them an icy stare which ceased all movement.

“We are not so weak that We have need of you, young ones,” she spoke in a voice cool as the winter winds.

The Vessel clutched at the arms of her throne. She stared forward with faraway blue eyes. Their nature was the very essence of ice
, itself.

As her hands tightened their hold upon the throne, she allowed her mind to begin its unanchored flight.

In her mind’s eye, the Vessel crossed the vast distance between her realm and that of the newly-crowned Pyrosian Dragon Child. She saw the woman bent over her scrolls as she worked diligently on giving life to her plan.

The Sisterhood of Tears watch
ed closely as their Queen narrowed her eyes and seemed to focus her magic more intensely. What was she seeing?

The Lucidian Queen delved deeper into Aurea’s mind and the future of that soul.

The words and images she felt impacting against her hit her like devastating inevitability.

I am a God!

The Vessel’s lips ripped apart to release a scream infused with a life that her raspy voice had not known in years. Her long white hair whipped in temperamental winds caused by her powers. Her eyes glowed white with the lightning desperate to be set free.

The Sisterhood dropped to the floor in a frantic attempt to avoid the elements raging wildly throughout the throne room. They covered their heads to block out the screams and shelter themselves from the stinging daggers of ice falling down from the ceiling. They trembled as their hair crackled with the static of the lighting racing along the walls. Those who cried out, could hear nothing over the terrifying winds which threatened to cast them all away.

“We must find Our successor,” the Vessel commanded. “She must face what comes. She must kill a God.”

Then the most powerful Sorceress in Lucidia collapsed within her throne. As her body fell to a restored quiet, the chaos around her died away, leaving only the might of her words to echo throughout the room.

******************

With new ambitions rising inside her, the ruler of Pyros was forced to rely upon herself more than ever before. The desires she had could not be shared with anyone. At least, not yet, she cautioned herself. She had to discover more about what she intended to do. Otherwise there would be no hope of fleshing out the plans beginning to take shape within her mind. However, in order to do that, she would have to do what she had spoken out against so many times before. Aurea would have to embrace the old ways.

              The thought of it sickened her. The past had had no lure for her. In fact, she had shunned it openly. Those words were difficult to swallow. They tasted of wisdom-spouting druids and superstitious men like Angelos III, who looked to Oracles for guidance.

             
She exhaled wearily while immersing herself within their people's history.

             
The past deeply saturated her every waking thought. She allowed it to overtake her. Its presence was felt within the dust lining old leather-bound books. It tainted the air with the musk of age. And yet, nothing spoke for the past more than every fragile crackle accompanying the unraveling of precious scrolls.

             
Her long blond curls tumbled around her face in a disheveled quest to point out lines of particular importance. She sighed and lifted her ink-touched fingertips to her hair in an effort to brush the tresses away.

             
Her place of study was the foot of her bed. She gazed beyond the mound of papers covering her make-shift desk. Her eyes fell upon the woman who had not regained consciousness.

             
“You would know the answers to my questions,” Aurea whispered. She smiled in a mixture of tenderness and sadness. “You know the stories for everything just like your mother did.”

             
Wearily, the Queen returned her eyes to the book spread out before her. “Why can't I find anything in all this-----” She stopped as she sought out the word to voice her frustration. The next word to leave her lips was dripping weightily with her contempt and sarcasm. “‘Knowledge’ about Logos?”

             
“I … am…”

             
Aurea felt the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. She shifted her eyes quickly back to Autumn, but the woman had not moved. Her head began to pound with the onset of a headache. She rubbed against the throbbing at her temples. “I must be working too hard,” she grumbled. “I could have sworn you spoke, my Love.”

             
“I am the defender of the key,” the voice came again.

             
This time the Queen was certain that Autumn had spoken. She crawled along the great length of her bed then loomed patiently over Autumn. “The key?” She remembered what Maven had shared with her on the night of the coronation ball. She wondered if this could have to do with the tie between the women of Angels and the druids. Could it somehow be connected to Logos? Autumn had not uttered a word until Aurea had mentioned its name.

“What key?” Aurea asked in a gentle prodding.

              “Destruction and rebirth.”

             
Autumn's voice was far away. It lingered in a dream so far beyond this world. She whimpered as her head rolled to the side.

             
Aurea blanched. She knew those words. “The stars,” she murmured. “The stars are destruction and rebirth.”

             
“Ash and bloom,” Autumn breathed.

             
Leaning closer, the Queen touched a bit of melting ice to Autumn's lips. She hoped to ease out the voice fighting to be heard, but she realized that it was weakened by its ill-use. She coaxed the voice to return. “What of Logos, Defender? Tell me of its secrets.”

             
Autumn's lips moved soundlessly.

             
Aurea leaned forward. She closed her eyes at the feel of the lips she craved moving so softly against her ear. Then scarcely above a breath, she heard it.

             
“The Wrath.”

             
“Whose wrath?”

             
“Druids fear---”