COF 4: The Abject Throne

17 | Realize (I)

Peltra loomed over Xanthy like a sore reminder of her failure.

Xanthy's jaw throbbed from gritting her teeth since the first hour the sirtya dropped them off at the place where Xanthy met Canelis. Where was the pixie now? Xanthy hoped the pixies were alright in their underground caverns.

A few pixies had emerged from hiding to try and build their lives back, especially those outside the walled fortress spanning Yin-Alora and some parts of Xai-Ren. Xanthy and Cirasa bought a single dagrine from a passing merchant using what's left of Cirasa's versallis.

"I'll pay you back," Xanthy said even though she wasn't sure where she'd get the money for it.

Cirasa had shaken his head. "I don't really have much use for money, anyway."

Then, they were riding towards Ok-sa, past the destruction the Heiress rained down on the territory. Their dagrine neighed as Xanthy urged the animal to run faster. They didn't have much time. Not when their locked magic began to take more of their energy and sanity. Not when June gets closer to Pidmena's embrace with each passing day.

Especially not when there's the Heiress and the Sovereign gearing to get the Virtakios with everything they had.

Cardovia and the Heiress, they would pay. One way or another.

Xanthy tightened her hold on the dagrine's reins. Cirasa had his arms circled around her waist and his neck craned at the mountains looming over them. "I heard about Peltra falling, but this," he breathed. "This is monstrous."

"That's why I'm ending it," Xanthy kept the ruins of a temple perched atop one of the mountains in her periphery. "This happened because the Heiress is looking for me and I happened to not be in Peltra."

Cirasa shook his head. Some strands of his hair brushed the back of Xanthy's neck. That tickled. "That couldn't be right," the shard fairy said. "It's plain insanity to destroy a city this large just because it doesn't have what they're looking for. It simply doesn't have economical nor political advantages."

"You haven't seen Cardovia," Xanthy urged the dagrine. Faster. Hooves thumped on charred soil. Some embers still haven't stopped burning. "The Heiress killed off her own servants because they resisted."

Same with the Sovereign, though Xanthy didn't need to add that as Cirasa had already snapped into silence behind her. His grip around her waist only tightened but not enough to hurt her. He's scared.

They all should be.

A war was coming and it would be fought because of Xanthy. She couldn't do anything to stop it except to run, to fade before anyone else could use what she had to do things worse than this destruction coating them.

The dagrine sped past the mountains and the forest that crowded the valley before bursting into an expansive plain that stretched on for miles north, east, and west. A stone dropped in Xanthy's stomach. What used to be a flourishing forest was now reduced to stumps peppering the ground in hazy arrays. The sky bore down upon them in all its bluish glory and without the canopies above them, the sun beamed over the plain like a searing lamp.