Chapter 34

34

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《"Cosmic Forces, hear my plea. In pain, I cry out for my Soul to be free. Plagued by Darkness, my daughter is my Sin. I pray thee, send me hither. Let me start again. Reborn in the Light, I relinquish my throne. Unto me, a new child. So that I may atone."》

Caste's head split, memories of her former life flooding in at full force. It was true. Fiaerna spoke true for possibly the first time in her miserable youth. Time flucuated at random here, opposing entire lifetimes on Earth. Seconds here could be hours there. Months here could be years there. Grasping both sides of her head in an effort to make the pain stop, memory after memory struck Casterline as if she were being electrocuted by bolts of Lightning.

《A golden bell encased in a sprawling, spiraling, decadent, luxurious Castle that stretched on and on.》 《Dancing toys, Magic instruments, all solid golds and silvers. Sweets and roast duck and ridiculous courses fit for a Queen but served to a spoiled brat while Her Majesty sat back quietly, secretly trying to starve herself to death in hopes of repenting for the plague her child has unleashed onto her beautiful Kingdom of Krowne.》

Was I really so frivolous? She...I mean she, the Queen. Not me. We're different she and I. But even still...I can undrstand why she was trying to pacify her daughter's Darkness with riches and overabundance. Such heavy guilt she bore on her shoulders...how incredibly lonely.

《Hungry, dying, loyal subjects. Smiling nobles, feeding off the Queen's forlorn hospitality like leeches. They think they'll be spared. They are wrong.》

《A commoner child sits huddled up in an alleyway. He watches as his arms turn coal-black with rot and begin to flake, little by little. He knows, as well as the sneering Nobles, that his entire body will be swallowed up by this Plague soon. But he, and a countless number of those who fell to this disease before him, have no way to know the cause of such misery. Hope dies in his heart, but then a warm hand reaches out and spreads Light through his limbs. It grows like vines, encompassing his heart until he feels nothing but a calm sense of joy and restful peace. He assumes he is dying, but when his eyes open he is healthy and whole and standing before him is the Queen Mother, the Light Bringer herself. But now her arms are coal-black and aching, a sacrifice willingly made. She smiles. And the commoner child suddenly believes in Angels and that the Queen must be the Archangel, chosen favorite of all the Gods and Goddesses.》

《In front of a white door adorned by golden flowers and a perfectly round, golden knob, kneels the Queen. Her body is coal-black up to her neck. She has absorbed the Plague from as many Krownesfolk as she could, with what little remaining strength she had. She chants that prayer of atonement that her daughter of Darkness hates so much. But she has no idea Fiaerna is watching through a secret passageway, has no idea her anger is growing with each passing night. Light shoots through Queen Delia's fingers and she gently presses her left hand against the middle of the door. It morphs into a mirror, and beyond the looking glass is another world. A world Delia has longed for since her husband's passing, yearned for since the moment her three year old unleashed her Darkness upon the entirety of Odinsai.》

《She had taken it upon herself to reverse the Rotting Plague from her suffering people, and had mercilessly blamed herself for not sealing the Princess's power as commoners do. But she had listened to the slick and sly Nobles in her Court and Council that had promised not to spread word of Fiaerna's Affinity and wrongdoing...so long as they were treated as Kings and Queens themselves. And so she offered up all that was hers within and without the castle walls. The treasury, the food. Even the Sacred Temple, her favorite place, all given freely in exchange for her daughter's life. The Plague would kill the commoners, the farmers, the Fire Starters, the Water Maidens. And in doing so would ensure a quick death for the Nobility as well once the agriculture withered away, the snow suffocated the fires, and the rivers ran dry. But they hadn't even thought of this chain of events. Educated as they were, the upper class was just too ignorant of daily hardships and too self absorbed to care for those considered beneath them. And so it went for years. Delia would go out into Krowne after Scrying those afflicted in the Mirror Door. She would use her Light Affinity to absorb their Darkness, healing them completely, then return to her secret room to kneel and pray before the Mirror Door again and again before heading upstairs to sleep in the pews of the Sacred Temple where the Gods and Goddesses could see her. She only felt safe under the watchful of eyes of the Divine. Only there would she lay her aching body. Only then would she dare to rest her weary Soul.

Her daughter grew stranger with each passing year. Despite Queen Delia's efforts to raise the child to be kind and self sufficient, she whined and cried and clinged to the point of crippling co-dependence. No maid, butler, nor servant was ever good enough to help her with simple things. She would not dress herself, she would not feed herself. And she would kick and slap anyone away unless her mother stepped in to do it for her. The child delighted in hurting defenseless animals and Delia often found them in her bed when Fiaerna was having a truly terrible tantrum. This was her Darkness Affinity seeping through. It was incredibly strong. Much too strong for any child to handle. So Delia sealed Fiaerna's memory of unleashing her Darkness out into the world. And once she did, the little girl calmed down a bit. She purposefully focused much of her time and energy on teaching Fiaerna how to strengthen her other Affinities, never mentioning the one Seal on her forehead.

And as Fiaerna grew into young adolescence she became sweet and gentle and practiced using her Lightning Affinity most of all to impress her mother. But one night, when Fi was exploring the passageways to stave off her boredom while the Queen went into the city, she came upon that cursed little spot. She heard muffled chanting at first, then peeked through the keyhole to see her Mother kneeling before a large door. Heat immediately flooded her chest, anger welling up. Mother had lied to her and lying was a Sin. She knew all about Sins, as Delia had taken her to The Sacred Temple every morning to cleanse herself in a ritual baptism of atonement. She didn't like the freezing water she and her mother soaked in. She didn't like the frightening Pegasus fountain that oozed icy water from it's mouth in a "Waterfall of Penance" as her mother called it. In fact, the baptism fountain caused her such great guilt and distress she often awoke screaming in the middle of the night from a horrible nightmare. The fountain had come alive while she was in it, her mother nowhere to be found, it swallowed her whole, pulling her down deeper and deeper into its murky waters. The last thing she'd seen before waking from her night terror were those blood red eyes, and the long silver horn the beast used to pierce her heart. Maybe Mommy had been having the same dream and was praying for the Gods to protect her from beast-fiends. But no, she heard the word "daughter" and "Sin" in the same breathe. So she leaned in and listened harder.

And there it was in that hideous prayer. The truth. Her mother didn't want her. Her mother didn't even want to be Queen anymore. She must have done something horrible to make her mother hate her so much. And her head hurt so badly, but she just couldn't recall what she'd done no matter how hard she'd tried. It was then that Fiaerna had resolved to follow Delia into Krowne the next day. It was there that she witnessed her mother kneeling before filth and squalor, letting commoner swine feed off her life force as her skin hardened and cracked like coal. The Princess was in a frenzy, she went off to take her anger out on some squirrels. Some of her memory had returned at seeing her mother that way. But the final piece of the puzzle was in the blank spot of her childhood, the Seal seared into her skin. She did not leave the pitiful squirrels in her mother's bed as she had done so many times as a tot. No. Henceforth she would be on her best behavior in front of Mother. In front of Mommy she would be a beacon of Light. An angel. A...fallen...angel.

And on Delia's death bed several years later, Fi begged her mother not to leave her behind. She pleaded that she had been a very, very good girl these past fourteen years and that she was sorry for the blank spot, whatever she had done then. But it wasn't enough, Delia had told her. She cupped her daughters face in both hands and said, "Your atonement is not enough to save Odinsai. You are my Sin. I brought you into this world, my Child of Darkness. Your faults are my own."

The miscommunication here would never become clear to Fiaerna and would ultimately drive her to the pinnacle of madness. Queen Delia never hated her daughter, but she did both fear her and fear for her. The Darkness she'd unleashed from within her body was an accident, yes, but the Rotting Plague it created seeped into the inhabitants of Krowne. It wreaked havoc far beyond Krowne, into neighboring Kingdoms as well, until eventually it burrowed into the planet itself. It spread to places far beyond the grasp of one frail woman with the gift of Healing Light. And it was that knowledge, infused with the fact that Fiaerna's Darkness would eventually come to corrupt her mind, body, and Soul that caused Queen Delia to willingly give her life away to save what few people she could, all the while Scrying into a world where not a single trace of Magic existed. That which had taken everything she loved away from her. And she found the lack of it to be incredibly beautiful. And with her dying breath, Queen Delia Rosequartz Krowne fell through the Mirror Door and into her next life.》

Perhaps this was a Karmic Hell in which the Queen's pained yet selfish wish to abandon the Princess circled 'round in punishment, forcing Caste to abandon Harumi now. Casterline fought these memories with images of Harumi. There was the possibility that these flashbacks of Fiaerna's suffering were merely being implanted in Caste's psyche to make her succumb to and accept the will of the Princess herself. Even if it were true, nothing mattered more than getting back to her life beyond this accursed medieval world. She would not repent for the life she found peace in. But in the span of time it took for Caste to come back to her senses, her fate had already been sealed. Fiaerna had made her move. She was now dangerously close.