In the throne room, Azure suddenly seized and fell to her hands and knees. Sammy was there like lightning to take hold of her. “Azure! Are you okay?!”

  The Naugite did not respond, her body shaking, her eyes having gone to the back of her head. Her mind was completely elsewhere.

  Sammy glared accusingly at the god-king, who had a quite disturbed look on his face. “Did you do something to her?!”

  He peeled his eyes away from Azure to meet Sammy's own. “Delivered the truth in words, only. I will… heed her request.” His tone had a lilt of irony.

  Sammy grimaced. Blueberry. How dare he indeed. Was her previous incarnation in Calrenazzod this guy’s wife? From the sounds of things, she wasn’t quite as evil then. The Mirror Demon seemed unhinged. Wherever she went, she ended up in an awful place. Some escape.

  Azure finally untensed, but went limp. Sammy caught her and pulled the blue beauty into her lap upright. Her eyes had closed. Sammy whispered supportive noises and held her as she panted and moaned, apparently trying to break back out of unconsciousness but slow in doing so.

  “How close is Azure’s appearance to what you recall of your ex-queen?” Orswyth asked the king.

  “Similar,” the king replied. “I’m afraid I can’t speak to morphological comparisons because my memory is not that acute across aeons of time. There would be no surviving references, either — that is the nature of this foul spell over everything. But to me, she might as well be her. Probably is her, within. In spirit, in soul. Words spilled forth, did they not? Words not of this… Azure’s.”

  “And what does that mean to you?” Sammy asked. “Words from your ancient queen.”

  The king sighed, then shrugged. “Nothing. Not anymore. Even her palace, I left to be plundered as a petty revenge, though I suppose the insult was wasted. The faraway past is made dead before the end, barely beating it. Irrelevant, and I’d have preferred to leave the matter even less exhumed than it is now. But these are the consequences of my sin of literal exhumation. Diseases we unearth with what should’ve remained buried. I accept and endure them.”

  Azure finally jerked awake, sitting up with a sharp intake, pulling away from Sammy, and then stumbling quickly to her feet, wheeling around wildly. Her eyes shifted over everyone for a moment before she finally sighed and sagged, a hand going to her head. “Bloody hell…”

  Sammy rose and walked over slowly to put a hand on the Naugite’s arm. “Take your time, love.”

  Azure nodded slowly. Her eyes rose to meet Sammy’s, glancing briefly at the king. “I had a vision. She went to the… fuck, the name is trying to slip away already! Th-the changers! The Temple of the Changers! Where those ruins in the Bay of Mengior were, Chestnut. Bad memories.”

  “Holy Forkin’ Shirtballs. So it was her. Before she went evil and crazy.”

  Azure glanced at the king again. “Oh, she was maybe a teensy bit evil before that.”

  I don’t like that look. Things she won’t admit to the king? Not good!

  The god-king was watching Azure silently the whole time, leaning on his staff. “An enchantress and deceiver through and through, but this I already knew. I thought myself exempt and was proven a fool for it.” Finally, he looked away, introspective. “The Temple of the Changers. You- she dealt herself her own judgment, then. If I had known, perhaps I would have made war on that mysterious shore, but no augury could reveal where my queen’s soul had gone. To such a temple that soul was destined nonetheless, for she had already changed herself irrevocably in some heinous and unnatural way.”

  Azure was listening intently. “To foil you. Right? To make scrying impossible. She conducted some crude transformation. A custom, permanent spell. I think it made her a true… shapeshifter.”

  “Indeed, you speak what must be truth, for even with a fake body, the real one remained lost. No doubt because it was twisted into something else. Foul and corrupting magic that was forbidden for a reason. Preparatory, conjuring a vessel for darker things still. She would’ve known this. Perhaps she believed herself to know inner secrets, listening to whispers on the periphery. If so, the deceiver tricked herself. She made herself a morsel, as it were, and journeyed to the dinner plate still hot from the pan.”

  “Oh, they got more than they bargained for, trust me. The ruins we saw recently where their temple was, I knew I- she had razed and slayed all within, burning with hatred. But she paid dearly to get to that capacity.”

  The god-king nodded. “Power always has a price. Here, we sacrificed time and thought, bending intellect in the hands of sponsored scholars. There are, of course, other paths. Other doors.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Azure sniffed in mild amusement. “Doors. A good way of putting it.” Azure appeared to hesitate, but added, “She broke like you. Worse. Lost part of her mind.”

  The god-king stared at her for a long moment. Slowly, his eyes fell away. It did not seem to make him happy. Far the opposite.

  Sammy cleared her throat. “On that note, we might as well move on. Why we’re here in the first place, right? I want to build on Itha Ranon. Raise a new tower high and make it the center of the world again.” She paused and looked around, noticing the guardsmen were perking up at this, listening with renewed interest. She grinned and swept out her hands. “What better place of old glory for the new, last, and greatest to rise? I ask for the king’s leave and aid in this.”

  The guardsmen all looked to the king hopefully. Stargazer & Crew did as well.

  The king eyed the goddess placidly. “Leave I’d grant, were it feasible. Sadly, the curse will persist long after I have done all I can to separate and fade away. The Sentinels simply intensify it and use it as a supporting sympathetic targeting vector to the living. It is passively quite dangerous, with violators worse off than what you’ve faced in me. You will know it by its words, as written only for the afflicted. They rhyme in the Cherished Tongue and all derivatives.”

  He left a dramatic pause and his eyes began to glow. His voice shifted into ‘Epic Mode’ with musical flow. “One what steps foot on Cherished Soil, like blood in the void your mind will boil; festering, weeping, breaking apart, reaped from the ground to sow in the heart. To the end of all age, caught by a sage, cursed by a mage, trapped in a cage; by the will of a god, no explorer will trod, no settler will plod, no burglar will prod — not without price.

  “None will resist and none will have quarter, no block risen here lacks poisoned mortar; for the world in envy and spite reached a hand, to seize and ruin its most splendid land. Buried and hidden away shall it be, naught but a memory of history; greed will not take and hands will not have it, denied the foul means of animal habit. All to remain is what might’ve been, ghosts and phantom remains of man’s sin; know this and know that now you are doomed, a beacon forever as what lies subsumed.

  “The land of the dead: now your bed, all that’s ahead, worms your bread. The fruit of your deeds: corpse-bloom seeds, choked by weeds, undead breeds — this is my price. Hope without hope for the final day, when skies will die and all must pay — the price to exist one and all, when even the stars above must fall. This tragic mercy the last thing you’ll cleave, final solace to take your leave; for lest the land rise in glory once more, your soul shall remain a casualty of war.”

  Everyone was silent for the recitation, feeling a heavy weight in the air. All the wraiths wore solemn expressions. Orswyth seemed unmoved as usual. Azure was frowning slightly throughout, listening intently with her arms crossed. Athos, now in human form, was rubbing his chin appreciatively as if he was enjoying the entertainment qualities of the poetry. Gabriel made a little whimper, clinging onto a big tentacle of Sammy’s phantom monster in fear of the scary juju magic.

  She’s such a big baby!

  The System suddenly chimed in Sammy’s head.

  “Ha!” Sammy gave a short laugh with her hands on her hips, breaking the prevalent silence like a whip, causing Gabriel and Azure to jump. “Perfect! We’ll do that, then!”

  The king shook his head. “One would require the crown and the central control crystal. I removed my crown and bent it, ripping free the control crystal and casting it into the sea, along with a few other gemstones as I bent it further in anger.”

  Once more, Sammy cast her gaze around to see the various bits of metal about. “You didn’t cast the remains of the crown into the sea?”

  “I only bent it in the natural world and tossed it. I turned away, destroying my avatar, and returned here for the final time. When I realized the crown had somehow come with me despite discarding it, I shattered it hence. I don’t believe the control crystal was returned here. I threw it down into a fissure, perhaps to meet oblivion. For what reason I simply tossed aside the crown on the seabed rather than delivering it also to oblivion, I cannot say.”

  Sammy sighed. “Quite the tantrum.” I’d certainly never have a tantrum where I throw my crown- wait. Shit.

  “Indeed.”

  “That’s love for you,” Azure commented. “I don’t blame you for being angry. A god’s anger is simply on a different level of magnitude.”

  The god-king shrugged. “What’s done is done. I am sorry for the news. Perhaps you should build on richer, less haunted ground than my old stones. Itha Ranon will live on regardless in those who serve and pursue enlightenment.”

  Sammy stared at him with her back straight and her chin raised. “The tower will rise again, king.” She held out her hand and pulled a piece of metal on the floor to her hand telekinetically, gesturing with it and smiling confidently. “And you will bless your heiress with your newly restored crown.”

  "No, not the curse of slam poetry, anything but that!"

  Next Chapter...

  This crown might be like Humpty Dumpty.

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