As promised, Aloe bought Xochipilli some sweets, and after that, they searched for a place to spend the night. She was aching to complete her mission, to put an end to all of this, to her djinns, to her torment, to her inner screams… but she couldn't leave Xochipilli alone. Not today. She had hurt him, and he needed her.

  Tomorrow. The day is tomorrow. She continued whispering to herself.

  Alas, the day was still young as the sun had yet to set – as close as it was to it – so they did as in Sadina and asked the locals around. At first for lodging, but once they handled that, her next inquiry was her target.

  "Do you know if it would be possible to see the Calipha?" Aloe asked a random woman. She was alone and seemed rather… vulnerable to her glamour, making her an easy interrogation target.

  "I… why would you like to see her?" The woman asked out of confusion, mostly out of the sudden question, rather than suspicion.

  "Pilgrimage," the druid responded with confidence. "I've come from far away to see the Heavenly Descendant."

  "You mean that you…?" Aloe nodded at the question and the woman blushed in kind. "Oh, heavens. I didn't know people still… upheld that tradition."

  "Would it be possible to see her then?"

  "Well, I tend to stay away from politics…" the woman grimaced. "But I know the palace is open some days to visits, though they only attend to high-profile people."

  "That won't be a problem," the Mother of Plants smiled, making the woman blush again. "I'm sure the Calipha will want me. And I want her too."

  "I… of course…" She mused lost in thought and cross-eyed.

  "Girl, here," Aloe snapped her fingers, calling for her attention.

  The woman blinked repeatedly and turned to her senses. Perhaps it was too much glamour… she's even drooling, for heavens' sake!

  "But I'm afraid that you arrive late today," the woman continued. "They only accept visits in the morning at the palace. You will have to wait for tomorrow."

  "Perfect, I was hoping to wait for tomorrow already. Thanks for answering~"

  "Of course…" The woman murmured hunched over, her eyes locked on Aloe even as she walked away with Xochipilli.

  As the rest of the day was dedicated to themselves, she and Xochipilli did a bit of tourism around the old city of Asina. Unlike Sadina, there was nothing she could remember about the city, even if she had been a whole season here because she had been locked – or rather limited from her mobility – to the palace.

  This had the advantage of not suffering from bouts of melancholy, but also the disadvantage of not knowing where anything was. Still, Asina was a colorful city with its pavements of colored tiles, silken canopies lingering on the treeless avenues, and arboreal canopies in avenues with those.

  It soothed the heart to walk across those streets.

  Xochipilli had even forgotten about the colossal needles of the outer city as the old one was just that beautiful. There was no reason to leave it.

  But unfortunately, their touristic walk was cut short as night fell. Asina was illuminated like all the other Ydazi cities they had been with their artistically expressive lampposts of Myriads, but the light wasn't the problem. The dropping temperatures and the boy's exhaustion were.

  "I can keep going!" The young druid protested.

  "Oh, Xochipilli. You are yawning on every other street. Let us go back to the hotel. We can continue exploring the city tomorrow, it won't move anywhere."

  "You promise?" The boy pouted.

  "I do," she caressed the top of his head. "But the morning is mine. You must promise me to stay in the hotel room until I come back. Can you do that?"

  "Only if you buy me more sweets!"

  Aloe smiled. "That I can do."

  Beyond buying him some sweets which she stored for tomorrow morning, Aloe also gifted Xochipilli with a dinner at the hotel. Her savings were running low, but she didn't care. Soon she wouldn't have a need for money anymore.

  The child was even more exhausted than he let on as he collapsed the moment his head touched the pillow. Aloe watched his peaceful expression as he slept, but she didn't remain with her arms crossed for the whole night. Even if it was barely a handful of hours, she was going to do everything in her grasp to prepare herself.

  Her hands trembled with expectations.

  Her stomach palpitated with nervousness.

  But her heart remained static like stone.

  Barely a few hours… she promised herself over the whole night as she kept making seeds, and even storing some miniature grown specimens on her Slowtide pocket. She was thankful for her findings, for her miniature evolutions had the same potency as any other evolution, but with the merit of occupying far less space.

  The moment the sun came out, Aloe was already on the move.

  She left the sweets she had bought the night before on the nightstand alongside a glass of water so Xochipilli could have breakfast whenever he woke up, but otherwise, she moved with a single objective in mind.

  An objective that had taken too much of her mind for far too long.

  The streets of Asina were barely waking up and they already had more people than Selen at peak hour. There was no mistaking it, this was the capital, the heart of the Ydazi Caliphate.

  Aloe let herself loose.

  No longer was her concentration wasted on keeping her searing glamour in check, but on fanning the flames of her rage. Too much brainpower had been wasted on keeping herself shackled.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Asina noticed her.

  The city was unable to not look at her. Some weak-willed people even followed her for a few streets until they remembered what the hells they were doing before returning to their businesses.

  It was dangerous being this visible but also refreshing. It was as if she had had her hair bound on a bun so tight it hurt her scalp and only now she let her mane flow free. Her hair grew longer if just to reflect her own thoughts.

  She took her time, meaning every step on her way to the palace. She was liberated, but for some reason… her head just hurt. The end… it was something hard to grasp her mind around it.

  But her thoughts slowed not her pace.

  By the time she stood in front of the gates of the palace of Asina, it was morning already. The gates were wide open with a couple of guards to the side, but they made no fuss as she stepped inside the perimeter. They looked at her, of course, no one just didn't look at Aloe Ayad, but kept their tongues to themselves.

  "Ah…" Aloe groaned in pain at the sight.

  It had been two centuries since she had last been here, yet the palace remained the same as she had left it. Memories bled in front of her, and whilst there were minute differences, especially on the thickness of the foliage and flora, it was all the same.

  An image trapped in time.

  Aloe needed no directions to be told where to go. She knew perfectly where the audience hall was.

  Ceiling frescoes of sublime artistry, tiled floors of intricate patterns, colorful stained-glass windows… the palace of Asina just exuded color and shape, but beyond all else, richness. Not the richness of wealth, no, but the richness of depravity.

  The awful depravity of the imperial family.

  People waited outside of the audience hall in an orderly queue, a powerful vitality waiting inside. The reason why they did so was because there was a massive door of stone blocking the passage. It was a ritual since ancient times, times far older than hers, where people would have to wait for two guards to open the massive doors. But the colossal slabs of stone with their height in the tens of meters were heavier than buildings, and even with the mechanical advantages of hinges and whatnot, it took minutes for normal non-cultivator guards to open the doors with much effort. It was apparently some sort of message about having to wait for the sovereign of the nation or something like that.

  Aloe cared not for such a moronic message.

  She walked to the beginning of the queue, and whilst some people threatened to so much open their lips in disagreement, a single gaze laid upon her was all they needed to close it again. There was no damage in having such a gorgeous woman step in front of the line, after all.

  The Mother of Plants placed her hands on the stone slabs, and – with a slight of her wrists – she swung them wide open, the building-sized doors threatening to collapse.

  That got the interest of everyone in the audience hall.

  The guards that were positioned on two rows before the throne now jolted upright with their weapons pathetically pointing at her. All had three digits minimum of Haya, and Aloe couldn't even bother to acknowledge them.

  Her eyes only lay on the woman on the throne.

  "Who dares to crash into my palace?" The Calipha's bombastic voice echoed through the audience hall. As powerful as it was, Aloe knew it wasn't assisted by the strength stance. That was just her default voice.

  Aloe kept stepping forward, undaunted by the Calipha and the many guards pointing their spears at her. Those spears were decorative, anyhow. Any weapon that wasn't the body of a cultivator would shatter upon colliding against the toughness internal infusion.

  "Halt I say!" The woman on the throne ordered and Aloe finally deigned herself to stop, if just to look at her.

  Her eyes laid upon a gorgeously dressed woman of bronze skin. But it wasn't a youthful woman she saw, but a mature one. As maddingly beautiful as she was, there were signs of wrinkles on her body. As timeless as she was, the passage of time took its toll on her. Of course, if she were to portray her real age she would be just a wrinkled mess if not outright dust.

  "I ordered you to introduce yourself, do not make the mistake of making me repeat for a third time." The Calipha's voice was powerful but also… enticing.

  She has switched to the charm stance. Aloe didn't even need to look at the woman's flow of vitality to know it, the change in mannerisms was revelation enough. The dressed woman calmly closed her parasol – which she had had open all this time – and she raised her head to look at the visage of the Calipha…

  Amber.

  No… Aloe nearly whimpered at the sight of those glowing amber eyes. The woman who stood before her wasn't the Calipha. She couldn't be.

  Not only those amber eyes were familiar to her, but also the vitality.

  "Where is Aaliyah?" Aloe commanded, her eyes shining like sunlit emeralds.

  "You talk back to me?" The woman on the throne howled, standing up from the glorified chair.

  "I am not here for games," the Mother of Plants voice was low but unfathomably deep. She pressed her foot against the ground ever-so-slightly, a feather-light caress, yet the surrounding tiles cracked. "Tell me where she is, Naila."

  Indeed. The woman standing before her was Naila Asina, the sultanzade, the imperial scribe of Sadina, and the daughter of the odious Aaliyah-al-Ydaz who was her target. Her quest.

  "Naila? Wait…" Naila mused as she laid her eyes on the druid. "Those emerald eyes… No… Ayad? Aloe Ayad? How are you even alive?"

  "I could ask the same question, child," Aloe answered in a near growl. "Now stop wasting my time and tell me where your mother is, I have a score to settle."

  It started as a giggle, but then it exploded into a deafening roar. Naila was laughing. She was laughing at Aloe. No one laughed at Aloe Ayad.

  "Surely you jest," the sultanzade said with a hand on her face as she still chuckled.

  "I am not," the vegetable woman. "Bring your mother to me before I lose my patience."

  "Oh, Aloe Ayad… Where have you been living at? Under a rock?" Aloe almost flinched because the woman's words hit true even if it had been a jest. "My mother is not here. Not in Asina. Not in Khaffat." She uttered her next words slowly, a djinnish grin drawn in her visage. "For I have killed her."

  Aloe heard something crack.

  For I have killed her. The words echoed in Aloe's mind. Once. Twice. And more. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

  For I have killed her.

  "I am not here for games," the emerald-eyed cultivator reiterated, her voice completely deprived of emotion now. "Tell me where the whore of your mother is before I get angry."

  "But you know where my mother is, you must have felt it before making your way to Asina from whatever hell you crawled from, Aloe Ayad."

  "No…" She dropped her parasol to the ground as she painfully muttered that word. But it made sense. Too much sense. Aloe couldn't deny Naila's words, for many pieces of the puzzle now made sense.

  Slavery. Caliphate. Evergreen. World Tree. Dryads. So many clues had been in front of her all of this time, yet she chose to ignore every single one of them for they didn't fit her narrative; didn't fit her quest.

  "Oh, yes~" Naila added, her voice but a seductive grasp. "She has been rotting under the earth for two centuries now."

  Two centuries. Aloe repeated in her mind.

  The cracks became louder.

  "S-she is dead?" Her mind was incapable of processing it. "But… but… I was supposed to…"

  "As I have said, my mother is long dead," Naila said amusedly as she stepped forward, down from the podium of her throne, and closed into Aloe. "You stand before Naila-al-Ydaz, Calipha of Ydaz, for I am her killer."

  Her killer. Her killer. Her killer.

  Her killer. Her killer.

  Her killer.

  Her killer.

  Something broke. Definitely. Permanently.

  Aloe Ayad, the Mother of Plants, the First Druid, goddess amongst humans, the strongest being there was, collapsed on her knees like a puppet that had its strings cut.

  Her hands trembled.

  Her eyes stopped blinking.

  Her lungs stopped breathing.

  Her heart stopped beating.

  All of that was useless to her. She didn't need it. It had been all an act. A poor imitation of humanity, to cling herself to what she was not. Her last vestiges of humanity collapsed like she had just done. Like her quest did. Her killer. Naila's voice kept echoing in her mind. Two centuries.

  She had failed.

  She had failed her quest before she had even started it.

  For I have killed her.

  She felt… empty.

  The fire of her hope was extinguished.

  The fire of her life was… extinguished.

  "Ah…" Aloe Ayad whimpered, her body, mind, and heart finally gave in. They had held for far too long, only to be thrown on the ground and stepped on. Then she muttered five dreadful words. "Should I end it all?"