Menuans

“Lavenza,” said the old woman. “Richard. Child.”

“Deme,” Lavenza introduced. “This is Headmistress Eifen. She was the head of the monastery when I was growing up. Headmistress, this is Deme.”

“Hello,” Deme smiled awkwardly.

“Child,” the old woman murmured with a pensive scowl.

“Deme, can you give us some privacy for a little bit?” Lavenza asked. “Just don’t venture too far from the courtyard.”

“Oh. Alright.”

Deme walked off to inspect an old forge she thought she had spotted while they had descended the hill. Lavenza remembered it as an ordinary workshop. The servants had used it to fix plows, hinges, and metal fittings.

“Have you brought her here to gloat, Lavenza?” Eifen chuckled. “My, you’ve grown bold.”

“What’s going on here?” Richard asked. “I don’t understand.”

“How predictable for someone who grew up on children’s stories and adventure books,” Eifen grinned. “What were you expecting, Richard, when you saw me again?”

“You’re petrifying,” he observed.

“How nice of you to notice,” she snorted. “Courtesy of the Demon King, I’m afraid. I did not take the necessary precautions. I believed that the magic of the Endire and my talents would protect me from even the Abyss. I was wrong. And so here I waste away, in what’s left of the monastery.”

“Then what was all this for?”

“Has Lavenza still not told you?” Eifen said. “No, I can see from her face that she’s told you plenty already. I did everything for her, for Lavenza, Richard. I would have locked her in the Whispering Chamber and shielded her from the death of this age, but she refused, because she loved some wench and will sacrifice everything to save the life of a child that is not her own.”

“Deme,” Richard answered.

“The child,” Eifen scoffed. “I knew I had failed when I did not bury her in the mountains to the west. When they survived, I could not trace where Lavenza had whisked herself to. She must have used the child's thoughts as a conduit. I then suspected she would be after Antigonus’s heart next. I panicked and attempted to breach the inner sanctum in the City of Stone to steal the king’s heart of stone for myself. When that failed, my last hope was that you would slay the Demon King on my behalf, Richard, or perhaps take the heart as your own, thinking that it may save Aparthia.”

“And would it?” Richard said. “Could it save Aparthia?”

“You already know the answer, Richard,” Eifen laughed. “Why do you torture yourself still?”

'“I want to hear it from you.”

“No. It could not,” Eifen shook her head. “Besides, you would have grasped the heart and I would have taken it for myself, whisked Lavenza away and before she knew it, she would have emerged from the Whispering Chamber beneath a new, unfamiliar sky. Well, that was the original plan, but as you can see from my current state, I am in no position to whisk much of anything.”

“It can’t just end like this. You lied to me. You tried to murder a child, kill Lavenza.”

“What were you expecting?” Eifen cackled. “A final duel between Lavenza and I? A great battle to end the age, to test the limits of our magic beneath the Endire and to determine once and for all, who is the greatest mage of this era? It would have been exciting don’t you think? It would have fun to write about, I imagine, had you the propensity to author it before the end, Richard.”

“You should have to pay for what you’ve done,” he snarled. “You shouldn’t get to just—”

“Petrify peacefully?” Eifen finished. “Beneath the fountain where I made my home, raised the Menuans who served all manner of empresses and emperors? No, I think I will, hero, and I’m happy that Lavenza accompanies me at the end. She and I are the last Menuans to walk Aparthia after all.”

“How do you know that?” Lavenza narrowed her eyes. “The other apostles haven’t returned to the monastery since they began their pilgrimages. Even I’m not aware of where they walk.”

“I’ve searched for them, like I searched for you,” the headmistress replied.

“You're,” Lavenza realized, "you’re one that’s asked travelers where they’d last seen Menuans."

“Empress Seline has left these shores, or so I hear. What use are her agents to her now?” Eifen shrugged. “Besides, I raised them, you included of course. Do I not have the right to ask for their whereabouts?”

“What have you done to them?”

Eifen’s eyes harbored a glazed intransigence. A tepid stillness spread throughout her body. It was not just the petrification; the affliction, true, had infiltrated her arms and legs and restricted the movement of her chest and neck. But the headmistress’s soul had fallen deathly silent.

“After you left all those years ago, I grew very bored, Lavenza,” she sighed. “When the Endire began to die, the opportunity presented itself. I thought to myself, my old bones have not been trialed in an age. Why should I pass before I have tested myself? And what better way to test my abilities than to face off against my wonderful students?”

“So you killed them.”

“I felt so alive when they fell," Eifen said. "Besides, they should be grateful."

"Grateful?"

"What else is there in this dying world but death?" Eifen asked. “To experience the thrill of mortal combat and die by my hand? Or simply die, vanquished by a power you cannot touch or smell, transfigured into stone by the Endire? Which would you choose, Lavenza? Oh, but you’ve already chosen, haven’t you?”

Eifen grinned.

“Eco Severin,” she recited. “It was never meant for her, Lavenza. It was meant for you.”

“I would have hoped your motivations were a bit more noble,” Lavenza said. “I almost pity you more than the others.”

“Noble like yours?” the old woman scoffed. “No, Lavenza. The Endire stripped us of noble purpose when it decided it was time to diminish. Even my wish to save you was born from vanity. I wished to preserve my creation, you, so that when you walked among mortals in whatever world comes after, the fruits of my legacy would remain.”

Lavenza mulled over her headmistress’s words. Was she right, the apostate wondered? Had the Endire, in its twilight splendor, snatched the part of them that had once been human, reduced them to animals grazing upon the last of dwindling weeds?

“You’re wrong, Eifen,” Lavenza said. “It’s quite the opposite, I think.”

“You opposite?”

“I’ve seen guardsmen remain at their posts to ferry travelers along. I’ve seen wives wait for husbands yet to return,” Lavenza said. “That child? The child of the woman you hate? She knows nothing of my purpose, of yours. She’s wandered the world in search of her father’s legacy, with so little time left to spare.”

“Rafta,” Headmistress Eifen chuckled. “She won’t find any here, Lavenza. I wouldn’t be surprised if the weeds in the east have all died. If she’s as stalwart as you claim, how will you convince her to enter the Whispering Chamber? Will you force her?”

Lavenza said nothing.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

The old woman tried to lean back but realized her back had stiffened. Trails of stone crawled up her neck. It invaded the veins of her cheeks and crept up to the hollow beneath her lip.

“I’d like to pass my final moments in silence,” Eifen said. “If you may listen to your headmistress one last time, Lavenza, I’d ask that you leave me.”

“As you wish,” Lavenza bowed. “Let’s go, Richard.”

“But we can’t just—“ Richard said.

“Let’s go,” Lavenza repeated. “Let the Endire do the rest.”

They left the courtyard to search for Deme. She had not wandered far. The child had settled beneath the roof of the forge. She compared tools there and found a few of the hammers within the workshop still in pristine condition.

Outside, tepid clouds dispersed above the valley. A muted light embraced the inner courtyard. At the bottom of the dried up fountain, there sparkled a bed of crystalline gems. Even a handful outweighed the value of the imperial vault. A pair of stone eyes guarded over them.