68. Throne Room (Patreon)

“Hello, father.” I bowed to our mighty country’s emperor.

The old emperor may not be the strongest warrior in the Imperium, but he was a very capable mage and my mentor. His eyes possessed reptilian pupils and undeniable cunning, yet he wasn’t dragonborn. His horns were one of the mightiest around, though.

“Salayah.” He looked at me. “You know why I called you here?”

“Because I dispatched a brave soldier in search of your missing son.” I replied politely.

“No.” He denied it with a sigh. “Because you pestered the strongest soldier in the nation, the very commander of our army, to follow an intuition you had.”

“But father!” My tail hit the ground in indignation. I tried to argue further but he cut me off.

“No buts, Salayah.” He didn’t raise his voice, and neither he needed. “I know you are desperate to find your brother, but you can’t keep ordering Caius to follow such trivialities.” He referred with familiarity to his confidant, the warrior known as the Emperor’s Right Hand. Only the two of us could refer to the living legend as careless as we did.

“But this time was true!” I unconsciously raised my voice in an unpolite manner. “I sensed a strong soul while I was meditating.”

“Salayah…” This time, his voice carried a shed of compassion. “Your spiritual capabilities are stronger than mine, and I don’t doubt you’ll be able to surpass me as a mystic but stop yourself and hear your own words for a second. You sensed a strong soul, not your brother’s.”

“That’s…” It bothered me he was such a great father, or at least great with his words.

I usually got hypersensitive while doing my morning spiritual meditation, a quirk unique to myself, not seen before on our bloodline, therefore I was able to sense the souls of everyone in my radius. But it was such a strong soul, and the only people with souls like that I know, besides me, were my father and my brother.

“Then what is it then? Who could it be besides him?” Oh, brother. Where have you gone? I just wanted to see you once more. A faint image appeared on my head, too blurry to discern it. It had been so long that I had forgotten his face. I couldn’t resist it, my eyes becoming watery at that prospect.

“I don’t know. And whoever it was, it was not worthy of the escort you sent them.” The emperor sighed once more. “If it was truly someone important, Caius will make sure to bring them here.”

Father tried to comfort me as he hid away another sigh. One thing I noticed after having talked with the master mystics of the continent was that soul practitioners tended to sigh a lot. The saying said that when someone sighed their souls escaped their bodies, but maybe there was truth behind those statements.

“Alright, father.” I talked after relaxing with a sigh of my own. “From now on I will send lesser ranking soldiers towards my search expeditions.”

My father facepalmed and sighed after hearing my offer. “If that stops you from bothering our commander, then so be it.” This was the best agreement we could reach because I would never stop looking for my brother. And the emperor knew it.

“Thank you, fa-“ I stopped half-speech as I sensed an unnatural presence. The workings of offensive soul magic nearby. Father felt the same as his gaze wasn’t focused on me anymore but on the main gates of the throne room.

The doors shut open as a mana-shrouded figure appeared behind them, a black sphere orbiting on top of him. I saw the helmet of one of the guards deposited to overwatch outside the room, during my meeting with Father, laying on the ground. A quick check with my soul told me that he and the other one were still alive, only knocked out by the sudden attack directed at their souls. Another pulse told me that the intruder before us was the soul I sensed this morning.

Then I noticed.

Where’s Caius? Shouldn’t the general of the army overwatch such a dangerous individual? No… it can’t be. I shot out an overloaded pulse to look for him, but after scanning a ten-kilometer radius, I couldn’t find him.

D-did the figure kill him? I found I wasn’t able to move my body. Why? They haven’t even used a spell on me. Is… is this fear? Me, the princess of the mightiest empire in the world, is trembling in fear?

The arcane-soul mana abomination took a step forward, I skipped a heartbeat with it. This time, they unleashed a powerful wave of soul magic, unable to resist it, I fell to my knees as I tried to fight it. It had proven to be the wrong choice as I only fell lower, my whole body was now in touch with the throne room’s red carpet.

I heard more steps as the figure approached us. My breathing stopped, I couldn’t tell if I was holding it myself or if their magic was suppressing my body this badly. I started to get dizzy.

I looked at my father. The emperor observed the intruder passively, but in reality, I knew he couldn’t be able to fully resist such crushing soul magic. He was a capable mystic, but his affinity was nefarious, his knowledge only came from an effort to preserve the imperial dynasty’s magic.

The creature intrigued me. Such power, not only in the soul, but also in the arcane. I had only seen a leyline once, but their essence was identical to it. I wanted to know more. The desire for knowledge momentarily overwhelmed my fear.

I delved into the mysterious soul to know more about it.

It was like anything I had ever seen before. A humanoid silhouette composed the soul. Mainly colored with a vivid violet that behaved like fire, tendrils of white and purple thrashed behind it like wild enchanted vines. It was weird to see people having colored souls, only keeping themselves to the grey spectrum. And for those few who had it, the colors were dull and lackluster. But this soul shone brightly, a personified fire.

The eyes.

Those eyes captivated me.

People’s soul-eyes were mostly dark or grey, yet these eyes sparkled with the purest white I had seen, only surrounded by a vibrant purple that highlighted their silhouette. I feared I had been blinded by such purity, by such magnificence.

Finally, I noticed a detail muffled by the soul’s incandescent colors. Ears. Long thin ears sprouted from the head of the soul. An ellari. How’s an ellari here? Weren’t they in self-imposed containment?

Then... then, the soul looked at me.

Its full power was directed to me; the gaze weighed upon my soul. The Soul Sight was canceled as I could no longer control my body or soul, I was trapped in my mind as my body began spasming.

With my real eyes, I saw that the ellari in the mana shroud didn’t even look at me. I felt the difference of power, the inconsequentiality of myself, and the actions that angered them.

My vision began to fade to black as father continued his staring duel with the ellari. He started moving his mouth, but I could no longer hear. Then no longer see. My consciousness left me with one last thought.

Ah, what a magnificent soul.

**********

“You may do whatever you please to me but leave my daughter alone.” The man on the gargantuan throne begged. His clothes were austere, yet the throne and the throne room themselves overflowed with regalia and golden decorations. If it wasn’t because the sun had yet to fully rise, I would’ve probably been blinded by the sight.

His tired eyes were directed to the albino girl lying on the ground. Her hair was more akin to an ellari with its silvery touch; then a pallid beige skin like I had never seen, almost white. And golden horns were hidden under her revolted mane. Yet all those characteristics palled over the colossal white wings on her back. The girl, most likely a princess judging by the supposed emperor’s words, was undoubtedly a draconid. Her breathing was rugged, and her eyes were slowly closing, she wouldn’t stay awake for much more time.

“Answer me truthfully and your daughter may live regardless of the outcome,” I told the old draconid. “I cannot say the same about you depending on your answers.”

“I understand.” He nodded with difficulty.

His white hair was feeble, a result of his age, and not natural like his daughter, it looked as if it was going to fall at any second. Wrinkles populated his skin, bones pruning over it, yet his eyes still showed power and confidence. He seemed to have control over his soul as I did, perhaps even more, his emotions were tempered like steel.

Judging by the size of their souls, both father and daughter were mystics, or at the very least, soul practitioners. The daughter had fainted when she examined my soul because of the automatic defenses of Mystic’s Dominion. Only a testament to the spell’s maddening power.

“Did you order an attack yesterday on the same district you did two decades ago?” I scrutinizingly inspected his soul.

“What?” He truly seemed weirded out by the question, confusion populating his visage and soul. “What are you talking about?” I gave him a stern look. He instantly deflated, slightly flinching in fear. “Even if that were the case, how would I do that when the city is walled off?”

“It was a terrorist attack,” I added. “Any telemancer or mage with phase-shifting capabilities could have broken through the dome and provoked the explosion. If it weren’t for me,” I couldn’t hold looking at my burned arm, “thousands of innocents would have died.”

“I would never order an attack on civilians!” The emperor exclaimed with indignation. “I may have fallen for my glory, but I would never do such dishonorable order.”

So, he’s one of these people. Huh, something doesn’t puzzle in. I felt no lies, how was that possible? I scanned once more, undoing his pathetic soul defenses with Mystic’s Dominion, yet I couldn’t find anything. I tried another approach.

“You have contradicted yourself there,” I replied, my voice hinting no surprise. “Twenty years ago, you sent an all-out attack on a civilian port.”

The emperor’s soul spiked; his expression soured. “What do you mean?” Dread could be read off him.

“When you sent your right hand to Ferilyn two decades ago, he attacked a civilian district, causing thousands of casualties.” I explained to him with neutrality, still without showing my surprise at the emperor’s lack of knowledge.

“No, that’s not possible.” His voice and soul showed he didn’t believe what he heard. What was happening? “I commanded a retaliation attack after the High Arcanist ordered one of its own at one of our military bases, yes. But I am sure the offensive was targeted at a military port… It was a military skirmish, nothing else.”

I was going to answer him, but I stopped. The district had become a military port after the attack, just as their intel told them. I was obtaining more pieces of the puzzles.

“Can you confirm that you and your army believed that it was a military port?” I gave her unconscious daughter a look. She wore an expensive dress and plentiful jewelry, yet for a princess, she was currently unprotected.

“I swear it on my realm.” He didn’t need the time to respond to my threat. Looking into his soul, he truly believed it.

“I see.” Those words felt like cold water, almost able to extinguish my flames.

I always asked myself why the High Arcanist didn’t outright exterminate the Imperium’s offensive all those years ago. He could’ve just unleashed Ferilyn’s leylines like I did and drowned the draconids in death. If I had manipulated a leyline when I was only a nine-star arcanist, what could a mighty twelve-star do?

This made the decision of isolation and pacifism even more unlikely. Why erect a wall when you could order a bombardment?

Realization, not from myself, but from the obscure, untainted parts of my soul answered me. It was indoctrination. He was reading the country for war, not just a conflict. He just needed to do so a bit differently than other races because of the different mindset of the ellari, with their longevous and apathetic lives.

The High Arcanist was brewing hate.

“Neither you ordered a spec ops attack on Ferilyn lately?” I asked for confirmation once more.

He swayed his head in negation. “My country has been preoccupied with other manners to concentrate in a walled isolationist city. The embargoes on merfolk commerce or the aggressive expansion of the centaur at the plains matter much more than the ellari.”

I let the grasp on my soul relax, the ambient of the room rapidly losing its tense air. “Your daughter is sparred.” Something inside me cracked, the few vestiges of consciousness I had recovered during my travel rapidly diminishing.

I couldn’t believe it. Unless his army had plotted behind his back, the draconids were free of sin. “She has died by the hands of her own people…” The embers on myself ignited once more upon such indignation.

My vision turned black.

**********

“M-maybe I can help you.” The old emperor told the gathering storm in his throne room.

Although their conversation had ended and he had sparred his daughter’s life, yet the current aura the ellari emitted was more than he could handle. He felt an enormous pressure, one so oppressive and terrible that not even Caius could be able to transmit it in his dragon form. It was something more… primordial.

The soulless eyes of the ellari penetrated his very being, dissecting the emperor’s soul. He couldn’t trust the current time bomb to let anyone in the palace escape alive, let alone himself. This was a risky maneuver, but it was the only way to end this in a bloodless manner.

“You said you lost someone impor-“ His voice was cut down as the spiritual pressure was increased by a hundredfold and the ellari took a step forward. The air was even ionized by the incredibly concentrated sparks of arcane energy flowing out of his body.

Small sparks of arcane electricity condensed in the air and jumped around, constantly hitting the ellari’s skin and burning his flesh off. Yet the mage did not falter. Whenever arcane leftovers burned his flesh, powerful regeneration would heal it back to its previous state instantly, as if time itself had been rewound.

The monarch took a deep and slow breath to refill his empty lungs. Every inspiration hurt, but he would asphyxiate otherwise. He had always been conscious of his impotence all his life, the fact that even his children surpassed him when they were young was confirmation enough of his lack of magical prowess. Yet now, as he looked at the maelstrom of spiritual and magical energy, he knew he was the only one who could defeat it.

“Our dynasty…” he briefly stopped to gather more air, “is a long line… of mystics.” He felt like he was going to collapse any second now. His old body couldn’t handle this. “T-there’s… a way…” he remembered why he was doing this, he couldn’t die before seeing his son once more, “…to go back… to the… underworld.”

The unnatural pressure instantly dissipated upon the release of those words. The previous charged and stale air suddenly became frigid, as if the doors of death were near. He could hear clear water and the toll of a bell.

Do tell.

He felt it. The ellari spoke directly to his soul. A powerful voice imparted him to continue. The ellari’s mastery of souls was something he hadn’t been able to do with his life. One century of training, and yet this man surpassed him with ease.

Oh, Isyl. I have found a mystic worth of our lineage. What a shame it’s such a monster.