Chapter Nineteen

After I eat real food—AKA food I didn't scrounge up myself in rivers and streams and cook to shit on a campfire—the three of us head to the library beneath the conclave's chambers. Fred once again kicks everyone out, earning him more than a few dirty glances, but the man doesn't take no for an answer, and he doesn't stop until we are the only ones in the entire library. He even instructs Frederick to help him drag a bookcase in front of the entrance so no one can come in. Soon we're standing before the stone etching of a door in the deepest part of the library.

I stare at the door in the stone. It's funny. It looks exactly like the entrances to the undercrofts in the castles. Does this mean the city of Laconia is basically one big castle in and of itself?

Fred's eyes rest on the necklace around my neck, at the three aethers resting comfortably in their tiny vials. "I do not know what you'll see in there. My lady told me no person has walked inside the great chasm in eons, but once you are inside, you must combine the aethers."

"Combine them?" I ask, "How?"

"I don't know. All I know is they must be united once again, as they were before."

Frederick's brows come together as he asks his dad, "What do you mean, as they were before? It sounds like the empresses' magic is linked to the aethers of each region. Combining them…"

He isn't the only one who doesn't understand. I don't, either, but I know we can't dilly-dally. Sometimes you need to push forward for the answers you want, and right now I'm standing in front of a stone door that should hold all of the answers inside its depths.

Great chasm, here I come.

I move away from Frederick and his dad, stepping closer to the etching on the wall that was hidden behind a bookcase. A foot away from it, I tentatively reach up to the vials on my neck, touching them as I close my eyes.

How did I open the doors to the other undercrofts? The guardians. This door is different. Standing there, focusing on it, I can feel its pull—which is bizarre to me, because before I couldn't feel a damn thing. Magical threads surround me, connecting me to the same invisible force that hides Laconia's undercroft from most people's awareness.

I let out a slow breath, and then I open my eyes and reach out, laying my palm flat against the etching of the door.

The door comes to life from my touch. The etching in the stone glows white, and the stone itself loses its solidity. Under the carved archway, I watch as the stone shimmers out of existence, replaced by an actual door into the unknown. All black and dark, just as the other undercrofts were, but it doesn't intimidate me anymore.

I glance behind me, half expecting something nonsensical to come out of Fred's mouth, but when I look over my shoulder I see both Fred and Frederick are frozen. Neither one is moving. It's like time itself stopped the moment the door came to life.

Guess it's just me, then.

I step through the door, half expecting to walk onto a platform surrounded by magical torches. What I don't expect is to walk out into the bright light of day, onto the courtyard situated just before the stone steps to the conclave's chambers and the library's door.

My eyes squint when I walk out, but I don't stop. I keep walking forward, keep pushing, even when I realize there's not a single soul around. I'm in Laconia, but it's empty. It's empty and it looks… a bit different.

The buildings aren't exactly the same. The stone around me, beneath me, is brighter. Whiter. Like it's all newer. I do a little spin, and when I do, I see the conclave's building isn't as impressive as it is now. Its spires are shorter, not as pronounced or spikey.

When I finish my spin, I spot someone standing thirty feet ahead of me, their arms held behind their back, their gaze focused on whatever's in front of them. A woman, if I have to guess, based on the long, braided brown hair that falls halfway down their back. The person wears a mixture of armor and leather, a few furry patches beneath the shoulder plates and waistband.

I step closer to whoever it is. "Uh, hello?" The person doesn't answer me or turn around, so I finish walking up to her and stand beside her before I ask, "Can you hear me? I'm—"

The woman turns toward me, and I see her tawny skin wears face paint. Around her dark eyes, over her bottom lip and chin, is some kind of metallic, gold paint. That's when I notice there are designs similar on the visible skin on her arms.

"Rey," the woman speaks. "I know who you are. I've been waiting for you."

I've never seen this woman before in my life, and yet… I feel as if I know her. I just don't know how. "How do you know who I am? Who are you?"

"You have come far," the woman says, notes of wisdom in her voice. "You have learned much about who you are, but it is time for you to learn the truth. It is time you faced your destiny."

I break eye contact and look away. "I have to defeat Invictis."

"Child, you will do what every empress before you could not. Not your mother, not Gladus, not Morimento. You will do what even I could not."

That makes me look at her again. "You're…"

"My name does not matter, only my purpose. I was the first to come to this land, banished from my home for ideals that were too… progressive. The men in power did not appreciate a woman trying to be their equal, so I was exiled to a barren land. They thought I would die. Before Laconia became Laconia, it was a land that had been ravaged an eternity ago." She holds her hands up, motioning to the city around us. "This city was all that stood in remembrance of that time."

Holy shit. Laconia's a lot older than I thought, and from what she's saying… it sounds like the extinction of everything in Laconia is some twisted cycle.

"But I found something hidden in the depths of this great city," the woman goes on, and she turns and walks back the way I came, toward the library's doors. "Beyond the books filled with words I could not read and parchment so old it crumbled into dust, deep inside the chasm, I found the aether."

We stop just outside the library's outer door, and the woman turns to me once more, whispering, "It wanted someone to find it, to start the cycle anew. I bathed in it and was granted power. Years passed, and more people came upon the shores of Laconia. I helped them build. I protected them from the wilderness. I watched as they had children and grew old. Cycle after cycle, generation after generation. They named me their high empress."

"There wasn't always three," I whisper.

She shakes her head. "No, there was not. Before the three, there was one, just as there will be one again."

I know what she's implying. Me. She's saying I'm the new high empress—but that's just insane, isn't it? I mean, I'm still in denial about the fact that I could be a general empress. But to say I'm the high empress, as in the one and only? Seems like a lot of pressure.

"Before I knew it, Laconia was prospering. My people had spread and multiplied. They were my children, each and every one of them." She inhales sharply. "But I did not sense the darkness resting beneath this land. I did not know what destroyed everything before my time here. I did not know that a being beyond my comprehension was waiting to unleash its full strength once again."

"Invictis," I whisper.

"It did not have a name in my time, not one that I knew. When it showed itself, when it proved itself a worthy adversary, it gave itself its own name: Invictis, the undefeated. Its only purpose was to destroy. Its origin a mystery still. Perhaps it is simply a symptom of a land so full of resources and bounty, a way for Laconia to renew itself. I did not know, but I did know it was my responsibility to defeat it."

The woman goes on, "But it was the undefeated. It was more powerful than I could ever have imagined. The aether connected me to the land, and I knew it was time for the cycle of destruction to be broken… but it would not be broken by me."

"So what did you do?" I question.

The woman turns away from me. The door to the library opens on its own, and she walks inside. I trail after her. We walk through the library; it looks much like it does now, only with different books and an older, musty scent.

The key difference between this library and the one right now in Laconia? This one doesn't have any shelf covering the entrance to the undercroft—or the great chasm. Whatever you want to call it. The door to the undercroft is open before us, but we don't go in.

She stops just before it, facing me as she says, "I did the only thing I could to shackle the creature. I could not defeat it on my own. All I could do was separate it, and when I locked each piece of the beast inside the darkest parts of the labyrinths I created, I put a spell on each one. Unless Invictis was whole, he could never attack Laconia again. As another safeguard, I made it so if it was released, it would be bound to the will of that person."

"He was set free by people from another kingdom," I tell her. "They were the first ones to die."

The news doesn't surprise her. "I knew it was only a matter of time before Invictis was unleashed again. I could never defeat the creature on my own. In shackling it and weaving the spells upon it, my time was over, but before I surrendered to the aether, I took that part of me and tore myself in three, just as I did to the creature. One high empress became three, and so it's always been… until you."

I shake my head as I say, "But how am I supposed to beat him? You couldn't as one. And when your power was separated into three, they couldn't, either. All they could do was tear him apart again and lock him into three soul gems. Nothing has changed."

The look the woman gives me makes me feel scrutinized, like some kind of science project on display. "But it has," she says. "Everything has changed. You were born of my power, Rey, but you are from another world—a world I could not have imagined."

"So, because I'm not from here, I have to be the savior?" It's enough to make me roll my eyes. "I still don't get how I'm supposed to save the day when I have no more power than you or my mom and the others."

She says nothing to that, though she does turn and venture into the undercroft. I watch her figure be swallowed by blackness, and even though I don't want to follow her, I know I have to. With a groan, I push in after her.

The moment I step through, it's like I'm in another world. I stand on a platform surrounded by thick, viscous aether, yes, but it's so much more than the other undercrofts. The aether is brighter, and it runs like a river around the stone platform the first high empress and I stand on. It's like we're in a deep cave, with nothing but the white light of the aether to illuminate the vast space around us. No magical torches, no black sky. Everything glows.

"Rey," the woman speaks as she stands before me. "Can't you feel it? It is not as it was before. Things are different indeed. You were never only a girl from another world. You were always so much more."

"I don't understand. How can there be more? I don't get it—"

The woman's lips tug into a slight smile. "Haven't you always wondered why the scourge does not affect you? Why you are impenetrable when it comes to the madness that twisted your mother and her sisters into shadows of themselves?"

My stomach twists. I have the feeling I'm not going to like what she's going to say next.

"This time," she whispers, "and for the last twenty years, there has not been three pieces waiting to reunite." The high empress places a hand above my chest, above my heart. "There is four."

I practically jump back to get away from her and that hand. Four pieces? What is she saying? She can't be saying what I think she's saying because that's just deranged. I mean, completely fucking insane, right?

The only word that comes from me is a quick denial: "No."

Her hand falls to her side. "Yes. When Krotas and the others faced Invictis, when they put their magic together to trap it once more, you were there as well. You were a vessel that trapped a piece of it and you've kept it with you your entire life. It was why it was so easy for Invictis to follow you to your world when your mother sent you away."

All I can do is shake my head. I don't want to believe it. I can't.

"You are connected to the creature in a way none of the empresses before you could be. Invictis may think it is whole now, but it is not. Laconia remains because of you and your connection to it."

"No. That's impossible. It's just… not possible. How can something like Invictis not know that he's missing a piece of himself? How can he not sense that a part of him is inside me, if it's true?"

The woman replies, "It is a small sliver, but it is enough. I knew we would need a miracle to defeat the undefeated, but I never imagined it would happen like this." As if sensing my disbelief and my shock, she adds, "You are so much more than you ever thought you were, Rey. You are the key to changing Laconia's fate."

How the hell am I supposed to accept any of this? I'm still stuck on the part where Invictis is inside me, some tiny sliver of him, and that's why it feels like we're connected even though he's not a glowing tattoo on my wrist anymore.

"Laconia needs you, just as it needed me all that time ago. With you, Laconia will prosper once again, become a kingdom that rivals all. They may have feared you when you first came into their lives, but they will learn to celebrate you and everything you accomplish for them."

The only thing I can say is something I've been saying this whole time. "I don't want to be a hero."

The first high empress smiles at me. "There is no such thing as heroes. Once you accept every part of yourself, you will learn that those who some call heroes are simply people willing to do what is right, even when it seems impossible. Laconia does not need a hero. It needs you."

I turn away. Everything she told me bounces around in my head, so much information, so fast. How can I accept it all just like that and move on? I mean, shit, it isn't every day a girl learns she has a piece of an ancient weapon nestled inside her somewhere, that she's had that piece inside her since before she was born.

Fuck.

"But how—" My voice dies when I turn toward the high empress, because she's gone. She's gone and I am alone on this platform surrounded by a sea of glowing aether.

The aether.

I reach for the necklace and yank it off my neck. The three vials, each holding a glowing liquid, stare back at me. Fred said I need to combine them. I look at the white aether just beyond the platform and shuffle my way toward the nearest ledge.

Lowering to my knees, I unscrew the first aether, the bluish-gray one from Pylos. The vial unscrews from the necklace, its lid the only part still attached. I take the vial and hold it out above the aether around me. The high empress said nothing about combining the aethers, but I'm here, so I might as well.

I dump it in.

It's only a few ounces, but it's enough. The moment the aether from Pylos hits the sea of white aether, the whole thing glows a bluish-gray hue.

I do the same for Acadia's aether, dumping it in and watching as the aether around me flashes with green. The last one in is the aether from Magnysia… the vial my mom gave Fred, already full. A sigh escapes me before I pour it in. A red flash greets me, and I start to think that's that before everything around me turns white.

Like, blindingly white.

I fall back and shield my eyes, dropping the necklace with the now-empty vials in the process. It takes a few seconds for the light to die down, and when it does, I lower my arm and suck in a hard breath.

The aether is… it's everywhere. I can see it everywhere. In the air around me, threads of colorful magic twisting and combining, floating and falling all at once. Tiny jolts of magic made of reds, blues, and greens. Where they combine, they make a bright white. It's like someone took glitter and colored the air itself.

When my gaze lowers, I see the sea of aether around the platform is in much the same shape. Now, instead of a pure white, it's made of a multitude of colors—not only reds and greens and blues, but every color in between. A rainbow of energy as far as the eyes can see.

It's beautiful.

I crawl toward the ledge, thinking back to what the first empress told me. When she came upon the aether, she bathed in it. Don't know what kind of radioactivity I might be diving into, but now's not the time for hesitation. It's time to just do it.

So I stand, turn around, and push off the edge of the stone platform, sending myself falling back into the colorful aether.

The aether is still as thick as ever, more like a mixture between a solid and a liquid, something that refuses to be categorized. And yet, even though that's how it moves, it doesn't feel like anything on me as it swallows me up. My legs, my torso, my arms, even my head; I hold my breath as I sink into the aether and let it accept me.

The aether is magic, and it's connected to everything. It's alive in its own right.

And now I'm a part of it.