A Modern Fairytale

Dancing on blades

I have stressed this many times, but nobody seems to listen: the curse binding my soul is only one of certainty, not severity. It doesn't matter how much more I absorb into it after the probability of its effects has become whole. With you and Einar, given how closely related your family was to the late throne in the first place and your long-term exposure to me, I decided on the extreme. Einar was...a miscalculation, and I most certainly will retrace all my steps to see where I had gone wrong.

Maybe I should have gone back directly to Alasdair. Instead, I roamed the streets of Mecrisdale aimlessly for another hour. Traces of dark magic lingered around me, but the visibility of such wasn't the reason I delayed my return—King Alasdair would not react any more strongly to my dark magic than he had to my golden sparks.

Why, then?

☆☆☆

The familiarity of my workshop stood in stark contrast to the excitement outside of it—especially that area in the woods swallowed by dark magic. I watched the whole scene play out because that was the most interesting thing going on at the moment, but you are probably aware that I wasn't surprised by it: not by your slip of control, and not by the scale of dark fogs you were able to produce. Haven't we already seen all of that, back in Venethema?

Then, I watched you hover. It looked as if you had no particular destination—as if you were yourself convinced that you had no particular destination—but that assumption, I think, would be incorrect. Once I enlarged the waterdrop to trace your trail, I saw that you were getting closer and closer to my workshop, while at the same time diverging from it purposefully from time to time. For almost an hour, you went about this way.

...you know, if you feel like trying to kill me, just invite yourself in. Controlling your murderous impulses was never your forte anyway. We both know that.

☆☆☆

Rarely, I wonder if I should have banished Valen altogether rather than reuniting with him. There was a purpose, back in the day, when I separated that part of me from myself—other than having a convenient scapegoat for all the deeds I wanted to commit and simply seeing if I could. The dark magic I had just mellowed out now was a clear reminder of that purpose. At some point, I came to a pause, lifting my hands to check that the remaining traces had gone. Gone from sight, but the influence of it was still very much alive in me.

In this world, there are various kingdoms of all sorts of inhabitants. Rectitia—the land of man, initially the weakest of them all until Alasdair Castemont took the throne. He didn't try to harness power that the human body was not built for; he utilized only his natural charms, wisdom, and resources. In his lifetime, he discovered me and subsequently a handful of other species in his regime; he embraced them all and expanded his territory. King Alasdair is firm yet gentle, and I am comfortable.

An unnamed territory in the desert that insists on being nameless—a land of utter disorder. It isn't even a kingdom, for it has no ruler. It is an inherently unstable place, one that connects worlds to each other.

Venethema—I don't know what it used to be before my mother intervened, but that no longer matters. It started out as a fortress made for Queen Berenice's personal ambition and ended up as wasteland under your sparks—a shame I didn't witness that. It birthed false angels, by far the least studied race and most powerful, second only to a hypothetically powerful witch. Liraz was talented, but she was not that witch. If King Ulric was the type to endlessly expand his territory to fill the void in his soul, he would have made it.

☆☆☆

You'd stopped, just a minute away from my workshop. You studied your own hands—the dark magic was no longer visible, and yet you scrutinized so intensely I could only surmise that you were thinking about something else entirely.