by Scott Beith
“And the fact that farmhouse was lined with gold has no relevance to your story?” the doctor joked, trying to humbly make more small talk.
“Ohhh, yes. Well, it was… How did you know about that?” a flustered Arlo asked back.
“Midas created that sword when he was only a little bit older than yourself. Destiny, he called it. It was an invention He and Helios designed that was meant to mimic the effect of Nyx statues. A proof of concept for the Sunspire’s eventual creation, as a matter of fact, although at the time, he only really did this because he believed he could use it to ward off the single most evil creature that had ever…”
Delphi elbowed him in the side. “Maxwell!” she admonished. “That is not an appropriate story for this occasion.”
The rediscovery of Midas must have shaken up many nobles, as they seemed afraid to even speak his name. It was almost as if they believed talking about the former king would breathe life back into his reign, which was a real let down, as every adolescent servant and guest in that room was staring at the doctor quietly, intrigued as we waited for him to finish his fascinating story.
“They never do grow up,” Milena said, directing her comment at Delphi.
Getting ready to take my leave from this long dining hall table, I placed my second last plate by Anara, who was sitting at the table’s left corner, stopping briefly as she placed her hand on mine sympathetically. Her eyes beaming into mine, trying to study, if not diagnose, the severity of my own bleeding soul. In every room, at every moment, no one’s sadness ever got past her. As young as she was, she was always the most aware of her environment.
“Kya, you should sit with us,” Anara suddenly said, knowing how rude Milena would appear to the others if she refused.
“Yes, join us,” the doctor invited. “It’s time we apologised to you about all that unpleasantness that happened the other day,” he added, referring to his daughter’s actions in the pit when she beat me up. “And I would like to hear your first-hand account of what happened yesterday,” Maxwell said, pointing his hand at the empty chair to the left of him.
I looked up with the last dish left – Ebony the only guest without a plate. A plate I would take from her if I was to sit down.
“Oh, Kya, would you be a dear and grab some more bread as well please,” Milena then sweetly directed me, cleverly ushering me to refuse the request without having to sound impolite by saying it out loud.
I bowed my head at her before placing the last plate by Ebony and quickly made my exit. I walked back to the kitchen across the hall and over to the counter to grab the bread.
“Let me get that for you,” Arlo said, having followed me.
I raced him to open the side cabinet drawers and bent down to pick up one small basket from the pile in the pantry. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt your knees anymore,” I said with a harsh snap, snatching one out as quick as I could.
“My knees?” Arlo asked, confused.
“From having to kneel twice in one day,” I rudely sniped, handing it to him almost aggressively, and speaking loud enough to be overheard by the whole table in the other room as they stared at us, all of them silent and listening for the prince’s response.
“Well, they’re not,” he said calmly, looking slightly remorseful even as he took the bread back to the table. Perhaps more aware of my own dilemma than I had initially thought.
“Try doing it every day of your life then,” I angrily whispered back to him before storming off through the kitchen’s exit.
12
Realisation
“You shouldn’t stare into the sphere like that,” a voice said from beside me, but there was no one there. “Some say it makes you go crazy,” Anara then teased, materialising at my side and leaning against the steel safety rails thinly separating both of us from a long and terrifying drop down. Her sudden presence up in the tower snapping me out of a floating haze of aimless dreams while I stared blankly up at the molten phoenix egg that was the bottom of the Sunspire’s gold spherical sun-orb cage.
“You know how much trouble you would be in if my mother found you up here,” she said in a caring tone. “It’s rather reckless of you,” she added, referring to how I usually avoided these kinds of foolish decisions, and yet smiling at the prospect of me being so bold and daring to misbehave like she always did.
“It couldn’t be any more than I already am...” I sarcastically then disregarded, turning to look ahead of her and over towards the breathtaking sunset landscape of the towers spectacular corner balcony spire view, still too proud and embarrassed by my antics at the dinner table to look her properly in the face.
“Well, at least she would never think to look for you up here,” Anara said, moving to follow and join me by the corner rails of the door-less balcony overlook, the two of us tackling the cold breath of twilight beach wind after swapping the sight of the overhanging orb for the sight of hills and forest beneath the castle’s steep cliff face and river gorge. My rugged up best friend bringing with her my thick black raincoat folded neatly over her left arm.
Like a true best friend, she insightfully knew where I was going to be and just how cold it was going to be up in the spire. Somehow guessing that out of all the places within the castle’s walls I would defy the prohibited military zones and sneak into the Sunspire’s top tower chamber without any regard for the ramifications of being caught, nor contemplating how fiercely strong the wind’s chill was during the more brisk hours of day.
Never really being allowed to be up there unless escorted, I found it quite bizarre how unbalanced the warmth was in this chamber, considering the pure strength of light spurting out from the crystal towards the clouded sky. All those searing rays channelling endlessly up into the heavens, and yet, surprisingly, so very little of it seeming to splash out and leak onto us on the sidelines of its centre core.
“Mind if I join you?” Anara politely asked. “You know, you should be very proud of yourself. Yesterday you managed to show half the world just how capable you really are outside and on your own,” she reassured me. “You have an amazing gift,” she continued, easing her way towards the true discussion I knew she wanted to have with me. My defiant silence forcing her to think smart and hard about how exactly she might sway the conversation towards what she already must have known was something I would be very reluctant to want to talk about.
“But I guess being up here doesn’t really make you feel that way though,” she said. “It probably makes you feel as though the whole world is against you. That we only built this light to repress you. But I also guess that’s the cost of being able to do something no one else in this world can do,” she said, taking the coat off her arms and wrapping it around my shoulders, pulling the weathered hood over my head on my behalf.
“So I take it you heard about my fight with Ebony,” I finally replied to her, assuming that’s where her random train of thoughts was originating from.
“I heard it was in peak daylight and that you almost won,” she said with a slightly remorseful smile.
I scoffed. “Yeah… almost,” I digressed, staring outwards again as I relived all my past actions and mistakes in my head. All the poor decisions and indecisive failures that had brought me into the position I was currently in.
Unwilling to give up, however, the princess didn’t leave, she simply stayed beside me, admiring the spire. I could tell she still wanted to dance her way around the subject of her brother and me but simply had nothing she could say that wouldn’t bring it up awkwardly and abruptly for me.
“It’s not about her,” I finally confessed, continuing to gaze out at the scenery. “Although that doesn’t mean I want to see her anytime soon,” I added with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
“I don’t like her either,” she stated, as we stood in silence again before shifting the subject one last time. “So have you ever thought about destroying it?”
“What? The Sunspire?” I asked, bewildered by her statement.
/> “Come on, you don’t need to play coy with me,” she teased. “Some say those cracks Midas put upon it have left the crystal as weak as glass, and we ain’t exactly too far away from it right now,” she devilishly added. “Have you never once thought about at least hurling a rock or two at it?” she joked.
“No, never, why would I?” I said, unsure of her motives for asking such an absurd question.
“Well, that machine limits you and pretty much only you. You can’t tell me you’ve never imagined what this world would be like without it. What you alone could be capable of during the nights. Especially with that new sparkly light around your neck. You could be the queen of the night. Way stronger than my mother, that’s for sure,” she told me.
“You mean a queen of ash, darkness and dust?” I quickly rebuked. “What life would we have, if all the predators took back dominance over the land?” I added, bursting her fun bubble as I took the conversation a little too much to heart.
“That necklace really is pretty on you, by the way. Where did you get it?” Anara remarked, changing the subject as she placed her hand slightly over it in close inspection, just as fascinated as I was by its mild glow and strength of beautiful pale moonlight.
“Yeah, it is. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of looking at it,” I mentioned. “Akoni gave it to me,” I then added.
“Really?” she pondered, slightly unconvinced, her eyes looking into mine as if to observe if I was lying.
“Oh, he is just such a caring boy… Perhaps he likes me?” I said, dangling that priceless white pendant near her face teasingly, playing casual towards her true intent, just like she was trying to do with me.
She looked away, attempting to cover up her own embarrassed smile, but as that was finally a conversation I was happy to have, I was more than happy to push on. “He is a really nice man, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes…” Anara lingered to reply. “Shy guys normally are nice guys. He’s hard to understand sometimes, but it’s not like you have to speak to him to know that he’s a good person,” she divulged
“However, unlike my brother, it’s not in me to make dumb irreversible decisions right now,” she explained, picking up on what I was hinting at and giving up on the game in order to give an honest response to why she didn’t want to be with him.
“Oh, come on. If you brother can marry a work colleague on a whim, you can at least give Akoni one date,” I reasoned. “You would be doing me a huge favour. I mean you two going out is about the only thing that will distract your mother from me,” I joked, laughing with Anara before our gazes drifted back to the mountainside ranges far below.
“Ok, when he comes back, I’ll consider it,” she said with a small smile and blush.
“I suppose they have both already left?” I asked, assuming that’s why she was no longer at the dinner celebration.
“Yeah, they didn’t spare any time at all,” she said. “Just a quick kiss on Ebony’s cheek and my brother set off with Akoni. In fact, it was all rather awkward, if you ask me,” she then proceeded to elaborate, hinting that perhaps the prince didn’t really love Ebony and that the marriage was just a ploy.
I wasn’t sure if that was actually true, but it compelled me to ask, “Did your mother orchestrate the engagement?”
She hesitated before saying, “Kya I honestly don’t know… But I’m sorry about how it all ended. I can tell it’s not what you wanted, and I really would have loved for us to be real sisters,” she stated, obviously much more aware of my affections towards her brother than even I had been over the recent years. “I always felt like you two belonged together.”
“Why is that? Because him and I are so alike?” I joked, trying to hide my vulnerability about the subject.
“No.” She amusingly grinned back “It’s because you two are so different… Ebony and Arlo really are perfectly alike. And you could see just how quiet they both were tonight. You don’t have to be a genius to know that it’s always the opposites tha…” She cut herself off short as the sound of climbing footsteps quickly approached us.
Anara gripped my arm, and my whole body suddenly turned cold. My vision went blurry white, leaving me blinded in chills as I was only able to listen to the voices coming right up beside us.
“I swear I heard something,” a guard said to another. His voice and clashes of metal armour plates resonating from right beside Anara and me.
“It’s the machine,” the other one then joked. “You’re going insane, my good friend, just like Midas did. I’ll have to alert the queen immediately.” He laughed as I heard his footsteps moving back towards the stairs. “It was good knowing you though,” he added as I heard the second guard stomp towards the stairs and punch the other guard’s armour bitterly, less impressed by his associate’s harmless joke.
When the coast was clear again, Anara let me go, warmth returning to my body, along with my vision.
“You never get bored of doing that, do you? Just hiding away and listening to everyone tell you their secrets,” I said to her as we reappeared before the tower’s safety railing. “Being able to simply disappear and run away whenever it suits you,” I added enviously.
“I think you’d be surprised at the amount of things that still manage to catch up with me,” she answered back. “Every gift is also a curse, whether obvious or not. It’s all just a matter of perspective,” she said.
“For me, it’s not as easy as you think to have to hear the whispers of things you wouldn’t ever want to know,” she stated, taking her tiara off and playing with its transparency, turning it from being silver with blue gemstones to nothing but see-through crystal and glass.
“Do you think they’ll be safe outside the protection of the Sunspire?” I asked, staring up at the cloudy crimson sky, fearing what terrifying insects Arlo and Akoni might have to face in the wild of night.
“As much as I like to criticise my oaf of a brother, he’s one of the best soldiers the crown has ever had. And he’s accompanied by the smartest tech-head to ever live,” she stated optimistically. “What could go so wrong that the two of them couldn’t handle it?” she said as she peered towards the thick jungle valleys outside the front of the castle, as if she might be able see them in the distance if she gazed hard enough. “Yeah, they’ll be fine,” she eventually said, spinning around to face me instead. “It’s probably safer out there than it is in The Borderlands right now. And I’m pretty sure the only reason Akoni needs my brother is because he’s the only one strong enough to carry the crystal by himself. They won’t be looking for any trouble,” she said, although she had a slightly worried expression on her face that made me think she was trying to persuade herself of her words just as much as she was me.
“If anything, it’s a shame the sword you two brought back wasn’t a fair few inches bigger – could’ve saved them the entire journey,” she said with a laugh.
But I didn’t laugh. What she had just said struck me like one of Akoni’s crazy lightning bolts, sending me into my own private call for arms. Alarm bells ringing inside my head as all the events of the last two days interconnected… Thoughts concerning Midas’s house and where Arlo had conveniently found that sword. Pulling out the scrunched treasure map from my coat pocket in my grief.
“What’s wrong?” Anara asked, looking down at the map as I studied the cave’s mountainside location.
Part of the Olympic Mountain Ranges and inscribed in golden brail, the light of the twilight sky revealed one word to me among a hundred tiny other names and labels concerning tunnelways and doorways… “Destiny,” I read out loud, looking at the word used to describe the mine’s front entrance door. “Anara, this is a map of the Crystal Caverns!” I exclaimed, looking at her in terror.
“What does that mean?” she asked, clueless but concerned.
“We have to find your mother!” I stated, sparing no time to explain as I ran down the winding stairs, passing between the two guards on my way down the spiralling concrete spire steps.
The two of them so surprised by my appearance that they hesitated to move before eventually chasing after me.
All of us were bolting down the steps, and then running through the palace’s hallway that it linked to, moving quickly but nimbly as I leapt over guest sofas left out in the hallway as I turned and bumped upon the side of the front study desk, eventually finding both Milena and Ebony talking one on one in Helios’s private study room.
“There you are!” Milena screeched to me. “Do you think hidin–”
“Shut it!” I shouted, interrupting her mid-speech.
A room shocked into silence by my raw audacity – even the guards who’d been chasing me fell deathly still and quiet by the doorway, merely waiting to see what the queen would do once she took a second to recompose herself over what she had just heard. I, myself, having to take a deep inhale as I attempted to quickly catch my breath, I had but seconds to explain myself before her hostility towards me resulted in a scream so loud mine and Ebony’s heads would most likely explode.
I held out the treasure map as she approached me. “They’re walking into a trap!” I exclaimed, shoving it in her face to stop her from advancing any further. “This isn’t a just a treasure map, it’s an invitation to the Crystal Caverns, possibly even a trap or a lure, that’s why it was stashed at Midas’s old house,” I quickly said.
Milena snatched the map from my hand and took a moment to inspect it. “Explain,” she demanded, giving me a small window to prepare myself and deliver the horrible news.
“If Midas is still adamant on destroying the Sunspire but can’t get close enough to The Capital, where would he go? He’s most likely fortified the only place we can get a new crystal to repair the one he fractured,” I said, the words coming out in a jumbled rush, afraid Milena would change her mind about hearing me through and have me punished if I didn’t speak fast enough to prove my value.
“Your majesty, we found her up in the spire,” one of the guards interjected to announce.