Elsewhere, to the distant south-east, within the rolling sands of a great desert empire.
The Grand Archive stretched into darkness both above and below the deep canyon. It was a solitary, orange peak, jutting out of the middle of a great ravine. An indiscriminate mix of shelves and ladders, both misused as their counterparts, was carved into the sandstone mountain itself over centuries of scholarly accumulation. The smell of old parchment mixed with dust and the faint mineral scent of cave air. Hundreds of candles burnt within glass baubles, providing light without risking the precious manuscripts stored in the dry air. Quills scratched against paper in distant alcoves where other scholars worked.
Hundreds of years ago, this hole made in the great, large rock formation out in the middle of a desert was a common stopping point for merchants and traders moving between cities. During the eras of magic, it became commonplace for scholars to gather here and over centuries it transformed into what it is today: one of the world’s most advanced magical academies and magical archives.
But despite its renown, it was also infamous because of just how remote it is. Most people sent to study here never really managed to take their talents out into the world.
This made it the ideal place for nobles to banish their unwanted offspring, like herself.
The young woman hunched over her reading desk wore a hat two sizes too large. The pointed brim drooped forward, hiding her face in shadow. Useful for avoiding eye contact. She'd chosen the hat specifically for that purpose, though her mentors assumed it was just the fashionable eccentricity of the young. Her robes hung loose enough to disguise her awkward shape at least on one half. The way her hips and bottom had developed far more than her modest chest, creating proportions that made her feel ungainly and self-conscious as the robe was too loose up top but too tight down below. She always had a hard time finding clothes that fit right, especially out here.
Books formed towers around her workspace. Historical texts on dragon behaviour. Magical theory regarding draconic essence. Anatomical studies from the last recorded dragon sighting hundreds of years prior. She'd been reading for days now, taking meticulous notes, desperately hoping the research would be sufficient.
"Marvellous dedication as always," her mentor said from behind her shoulder.
She jumped, nearly knocking over an inkwell. Her hat slipped further down over her eyes.
"I wanted to discuss your assignment one more time before you depart." The old wizard circled to face her, his expression warm with approval. "You've been selected for a tremendous honour. To journey and study the last living dragon." He seemed genuinely proud, although not of her specifically. Rather, he was proud that a member of his institution would be able to undertake this task. "To document its abilities, its lair, and its behaviour patterns.” He clapped his hands together. “I need not tell you that the knowledge you bring back will be invaluable to the Academy."
She nodded mutely. Words stuck in her throat the way they always did when people looked directly at her. "Y-yes, Grand Master," she croaked.
"I know you'll represent us well. Your research skills are exceptional. Your magical theory is sound. And given your… unique condition, you're the perfect candidate for field study on this matter." The older man thought for a while. "Our brother academy in the west had tried but failed to learn more. Given the circumstances, you really are the ideal candidate to bring us the data we all so desperately need.”
'Ideal'.
She wasn't the ‘ideal’ candidate because she never argued. Never refused assignments. Never spoke up to say she didn't want to study a dragon. Those were, of course, good qualifers. She actually wanted to stay here where it was safe and quiet and full of books that didn't try to eat you. However, she was, as he said, the ideal candidate because of her condition.
Her ‘condition’ was that she had royal blood, making her particularly suited for luring out a dragon, of all things.
That's why she was ideal. She was the most delicious specimen they could send to the dragon.
Her father, the king of a far eastern kingdom, sired her with a common tavern woman and hid her far away here in order to protect the lineage of his crown.
"You leave in three days," the grand master of the archive continued. "Travel light. Bring only essential texts. You'll be recording observations in the field, obviously, not conducting library research anymore."
He patted her shoulder approvingly. She resisted the urge to pull her hat completely over her face and disappear beneath it. The chair creaked when she shifted uncomfortably. The mentor departed, already discussing her "important mission" with another professor with such excitement as if he himself were the one about to go on it. She slumped forward, resting her forehead against the nearest book. The pages smelt of preservation oils.
She didn't want to go. She didn't want to face a dragon. She wanted someone else to be chosen.
But she'd been selected. And she never said no. She’s not really sure why. She just didn’t have it in her. She pulled her hat lower and returned to her research, trying to ignore the growing dread in her chest.
She wouldn’t be scared of being eaten. But she’s just been having the oddest dreams lately and it was simply very distracting. She couldn’t hope to learn anything this way.
Back in the valley below the dragon's black mountain.
The air inside the healing tent smelt awful. The odour of too much blood and sweat was mixed with the contrasting pleasant plumes of crushed lavender and sage, creating a cloying smell equivalent to a perfume-washed corpse. The canvas walls trapped the heat from the braziers, turning the space into something uncomfortably hot. It wasn't even cold outside, but the heat was important for the healing process of those hurt during the failed raid on the dragon's dungeon lair.
Outside, the camp spread across the valley floor below the dragon’s mountain in a patchwork of temporary shelters, smoke rising from cooking fires against the peak's looming shadow that constantly hung over them, like a curse. Some men would say that, no matter where the sun was in the sky, the shadow of the mountain would always fall over them.
Whether that was true or not was, of course, debatable.
The twin Saintess Princesses moved between the cots filled with wounded from the failed raid on the dragon’s lair days ago without speaking.
They wore matching white robes that were finally stained brown at the hems from walking through mud between tents. But even the stains, somehow, seemed to be one and exactly the same, as impossible as that was. The volunteers from the nearest town over whispered when the twins passed, making the gesturing sign against evil even as they relied on the princesses' magic to save lives.
Saintesses or not, of royal blood or not, the mannerisms of their existence were deeply offputting for most people. It was almost insectoid in nature.
The first princess knelt beside a man whose leg had been crushed by falling stone during the evacuation of the dragon’s lair. Her sister knelt on the opposite side at the same instant, their knees touching the canvas floor together. Neither blinked. Their faces held the same blank expression they always wore, empty and smooth.
"Hold still," one said.
"This will hurt," the other finished.
Sure enough, the injured man flinched. His eyes darted between them, trying to determine which one had started the sentence. The first princess placed her right hand on his shin, while her sister placed her left hand on his ankle. Their free hands reached across the man's body to clasp each other, completing a circuit.
Golden light bloomed where their palms met.
And just as prophesied a moment before, the man screamed. The light poured down their arms and into his ruined leg, wrapping around shattered bone. The princesses breathed in unison, their chests rising and falling together. The injured man thrashed, but the holy magic held him pinned as surely as iron chains. In fact, it even seemed to look like the links of many chains, binding him to the cot to prevent his escape.
"I'm almost done," the second princess murmured.
"I am almost done," the first said, in agreement.
The light faded. The man's leg looked whole again, the skin soft and new but hairless now. And to prove it to heaven and the world below, he fell out of the cot and scrambled away from them the instant their hands lifted and the magical binds released, like an animal freed from a trap and running back into the forest. His eyes were wide as he stumbled, breaking away.
One of the volunteer healers helped him to his feet and guided him toward the exit, muttering reassurances that did nothing to slow his retreat.
The twins sat there and stared quietly after him as he ran away, as if having been attacked by a demon rather than healed. Silently, they looked back at each other.
“I did good work,” praised the first. “He seems in high spirits.”
“Another task that I have done well,” replied the other. “Perhaps he was overjoyed at his recovery and could not contain his exuberance,” she said, her face vacant.
She nodded. The other sister nodded. They both did so once and at the same time with no individual discrepancy at all in their motions.
The assistant healer stood by the tent's exit herself, staring at them quietly from afar. As they turned their heads toward her, she hurried out of the tent herself.
Later, the twins walked together through the camp.
A woman brought her daughter forward, running in a frenzy. The child in her arms could not have been more than seven, her skin grey and clammy. Fever burnt in her eyes. The mother held the girl against her chest, her own hands shaking.
"Please," the mother whispered urgently, looking at the two of them with fear in her gaze as if she were speaking to the devil himself to make a bargain. “She was outside scavenging. She came from the forest like this!” explained the older, tired woman.
The first princess tilted her head. Her sister mirrored the gesture exactly but in the opposite direction, both regarding the mother with their empty blue eyes as if they were two heads of the same hydra. Then, without a word, they both stepped toward her. She instinctively recoiled, instinctively protecting her daughter, whom she had just brought to them herself.
The mother hesitated. She looked toward an escape route and then back at the twins. But her daughter whimpered against her shoulder, the sound weak and thready. Finally, she lowered the child in her arms toward them but did not untighten the clasp of her fingers, as if they would steal her away.
The princesses moved to either side of her, staring at the girl from each end. They each placed a hand on the child's forehead, their fingers overlapping. The girl's eyes rolled back in her head. Her small body went rigid.
"Toxins," one twin said.
"In the blood," the other confirmed.
“Fae poison,” said at the same time.
“Fae? There are no fairies here for a week’s travel,” argued the mother. “Not until Durihain.”
The saintesses looked at the woman. “Mushrooms,” they said at the same time.
Before the mother could react, one of them pushed down on the held girl's stomach. The other stuck her finger into her throat. The ill girl opened her eyes in immediate response, vomiting profusely at that slight provocation. Both of them stepped back as the puddle hit the ground, chunks of colourful mushrooms from a circle inside of it.
Just like that, colour returned to her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open, clear and focused. "...Mama?" she whispered.
The mother collapsed, guarding her daughter in her arms. She was weeping. The princesses stepped back in unison, their work complete. They turned away without waiting for thanks, moving toward the next patient with their usual eerie coordination.
“That was very clever of me,” praised both of them to the other at the same time.
Although they were the only ones who did so. Everyone else stepped away from them, readily making space as they walked by.
They worked through the afternoon. The tent filled and emptied, filled and emptied again. Injured adventurers, hurt soldiers, and even some elderly refugees whose bodies had given out during the stress of the large influx of outsiders to the region. The twins healed them all with the same blank efficiency, their holy magic more powerful than anything the local herbalistic and alchemical healers could manage alone.
But it didn’t really matter who they helped, healed, or saved. The volunteers and survivors still kept their distance from the pair.
They were simply too strange, too… odd. The sight of them alone was offputting in an almost supernatural way, but combined with their behaviours and presentation, they might as well have truly been demons for how they were avoided.
One of them, a middle-aged man with herbs braided into his hair, tried to separate the twins during a brief lull. He approached the second princess while the first was examining a new arrival across the tent.
"Your Grace. Could you please help me with -" he began.
The second princess did not respond. Her face remained smooth and empty, but she stopped moving entirely. She stood frozen, her eyes staring at nothing. Across the tent, her sister went equally still, her hand arrested halfway to a patient's chest.
The volunteer reached out to touch the second princess's shoulder.
Both twins turned their heads at exactly the same instant. Their blue eyes locked onto the man with an intensity that made him stumble backward. Neither princess blinked. Neither breathed. They just stared until the volunteer fled to the far corner of the tent, his face white.
The moment passed. The twins moved again, returning to their tasks without acknowledging what had happened. But no one else tried to approach them for the rest of the day.
Later that night, they stood there in their tent.
“I did well today,” said one without emotion in her voice.
The other replied. “Exceptionally well,” she said, speaking of her sister, but phrasing the continuation of the sentence as if she weren’t saying her own piece but rather finishing the prior thought of her counterpart.
They were so conjoined that a compliment of one stood for both of them. A sentence from one stood for both of them. They were, together, a singular unit.
Kneeling and beginning to pray for guidance on their actions, the two of them leant in. Rather than praying individually, they prayed in posture together. “The dragon,” said one.
“It’s dangerous,” finished the other as they pushed both of their open palms together into two pairs of praying hands.
“Did Heaven send it?”
“Perhaps not,” said one.
“Perhaps so,” replied the other.
"We shall test it further," they agreed together at the same time.
It was quiet. Neither of them moved, spoke, or anything. It was as if time had frozen for several minutes.
“I am hurt,” said one finally, looking at the cut on her opposite’s arm that she had gotten when the dragon flung her away. “I almost died,” she said, speaking in the first person for her sister. Neither of them had stopped to look at their own injuries since returning from the dragon’s lair, having instead only been focused on healing the hurt adventurers and soldiers.
This was the first time.
Her sister responded. “Do not worry. I am well,” she replied, speaking of herself. “I saved myself from worse damages,” she said, referencing how her sister’s magic saved her from splattering against a cave wall.
“Perhaps I was too reckless? It has been too long since I faced a real threat. I underestimated my enemy. It almost cost me my life,” said the staff-wielding sister, speaking for the both of them at once.
“Perhaps I should pray on it for guidance.”
“Perhaps I should,” replied the other.
They both closed their eyes and pressed their foreheads together, holding them together as they did their praying hands. As one, they prayed. One couldn’t see into their thoughts, but if they could, they would perhaps also be unified as a whole.
“...I am dissimilar,” said the unhurt one after a few minutes of silent prayer. They both opened their eyes again, looking at each other from up close.
“Is that so bad, that I’m not like me?” asked the other with the hurt arm.
“Yes,” replied the other one. “I am uneven. Lopsided,” she explained. “I fixed everyone else. So I should fix myself too.”
“I won’t,” replied the hurt other, looking at the cut on her own arm. “Heaven gave me this lesson to study. It hurts. I must let it be so that I can learn from my mistake.”
“I understand,” said the other one. “Even now, there is a lot that I need to learn about myself.” She reached over to the nearby table and took the bread knife from the crumb-covered cutting board there and gave it to her hurt sister.
The unhurt one held out her arm and laid it on her sister’s lap.
“I will pray further on the matter once my head is clear,” said the hurt sister, lining the jagged knife up to her unhurt sister’s arm as she began to cut in exact replication of the slash on her own arm that the dragon had given her.
“As soon as I have a clear head,” replied the other, her expression not wincing in the slightest as blood readily began to run down from her forearm as her sister cut her to make a replica gash just like her own, staining their robes. She, in turn, reached over with her good hand and began pulling at the fresh scabbing on her sister's wound from the dungeon. It began to bleed anew.
“I am also still thinking about the dragon, aren’t I?” asked the sister with the knife as she focused on replicating her own wound exactly on her twin’s arm.
“Strange, right?” asked the other, also thinking about the dragon. “Why am I doing that? The dreams?”
“Sinful,” replied the other. "What is heaven trying to convey to me?"
The two of them, or perhaps just the collective singular one of them both, depending on how one were to view the situation, had no response to their own curiosities. They looked into each other’s eyes and then back down.
“I’ll pray further now for guidance on the matter,” said the one.
“Yes, I think I will,” replied the other.
Neither of their faces had changed, but there was a strange relief of tension in the air now between them as the two identical cuts bled down onto their legs in exactly the same way. Finding peace in that, they held their hands and foreheads together again and returned to prayer.