A Demon Queen does not lie. Some people might call this a virtue. Those people are fools.
Virtue is for creatures who need the approval of others. It is a matter of authority. A lie is a concession -an admission that the truth is something one is too weak to face head on. I have faced Gods and found them wanting. I will not flinch before something as feeble as truth.
Sara had asked me if I could make Marin bloom again. I had not answered her. I had not said yes and I had not said no though I had opened my mouth to say at least one of those two things. I had simply stood there, and I had let the question hang. A question left unanswered by a Queen is a promise. I might not have chosen to make it but it had been made all the same. It was now beneath me to let it stand unfulfilled. If the duel was between the world and my promise, then the world would bend. I had bent it before.
I walked through the village with my jaw set and my arms at my sides. The day was bright and the air smelled of damp earth. People moved out of my way. Men had always said I looked especially frightening when I was determined. Right now, I was. Almost as much as I had been that day, so very long ago. I passed my spot by the low wall. I did not stop. Small footsteps trailed behind me, I did not turn.
“Lys! Where are we going?”
That diminishing name again. Repetition did not make it sound any sweeter. Perhaps no more could be expected of a child. “We are not going anywhere. I am going somewhere and you are following me without permission.”
The footsteps did not slow. If anything, they quickened until the girl was practically at my heels. I allowed it. A subject should be there to see their Queen grace them with her benevolent might.
The hut sat at the edge of the village, half in shadow where the leaves of the nearest oak blocked the morning sun. It was the quietest place in Hamel, and it had been quiet for some time now. No lantern hung from its door and no dried flowers adorned its frame. Ash had told me that the other huts had slowly come alive again after the phoenix. This one had been dead long before.
The mother sat outside on a low stool. The boy -Marin- was in her arms, wrapped in the faded white blanket I had seen a few times now. His eyes were open and lifeless. His chest only rose and fell in a shallow, mechanical way.
Ash was nearby, not by the mother herself, but close enough. She was stacking firewood beside the door. She had told me she did these tasks -tasks the mother no longer did for herself. Ash’s gaze found me as I approached. She straightened but did not move to block my path.
I stopped in front of the mother. The woman looked up at me slowly, and her face was a face I had seen before. It was in the aftermath of a dozen villages like this, long since razed by the horde. A face that proved that the fighting was done, and it had not gone the way one had hoped.
“I will see the child,” I said. “Marin, I believe his name is.” I pointed at him. “I have the power to heal things, and I will heal him.” My red eyes bored into the woman’s darker ones.
Her arms tightened around her son. I did not think she was trying to defy me. She did not look capable of it, not any longer. “They…they’ve all already tried,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and thin. “Trisha's cousin came from two villages over yesterday. Sh- she had a healing mark, a strong one…it was a Line. I thought it might do….” She trailed off, and then shook herself before continuing, “The herbalist mixed something he said would help. Been giving him that every day...forcing him to take it but….” She shook her head again, and this time the gesture was so small her head barely moved. “Please...just let him be.”
“I am not some village woman, and I am no mere herbalist with some petty cure,” I said, sleeve pulled back and left arm raised, so that she may see the white Line. “I carry a Sovereign mark, one that allows me to fix things. You say other people have tried and failed. I say that none of those people are me.”
I did not understand the issue. A Queen stood before her, offering help. Men had committed great sacrifices all in the hope that I may look their way and grant them a hundredth of what I was offering this woman now. My favor had been rarely given, but it had never been considered, let alone spurned.
The woman stared up at me. It seemed my words did little and less for her -I could see that plainly. Perhaps this woman simply did not understand the being that stood before her and the power she possessed. To this woman, all power was equal, and all of it had fallen short. That was a common mistake the powerless -and even many of the powerful- made.
“Please,” The woman said again. The word was barely above a whisper. “I can’t.”
I opened my mouth to push further. To assert, to do what I had always done. My authority was something I had wielded for a very long time, and not once had it failed me. I met the woman’s gaze.
No…perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps having hope itself was the issue. I had broken armies, and yet I did not know how to break this woman’s pessimism. There was no purchase here. I did not know how to break through whatever shell surrounded this woman, not without breaking her with it. The old world had been much simpler.
I stood there, arms crossed. Very well. I sat down.
I sat down, cross-legged, in the dirt in front of the hut with my arms folded. I faced the woman, and did not speak. I had seen someone do this before, in front of this very hut. I did not fully understand why it had worked then. I suspected it had something to do with the act itself. It was not a thing I would have thought to do on my own, and I was not entirely sure I was doing it correctly.
I tried it anyway. Perhaps Ash had spoken to this woman. If she had, and if that was necessary for this particular gambit, then I was at a distinct disadvantage.
The silence stretched. I saw Ash staring at me, but she did not intervene. I took that to mean that I was doing this correctly. Sara had stopped some distance behind me. I could hear her fidgeting with a stick, scratching shapes into the dirt.
Minutes passed as the sun moved overhead. A bird called from somewhere above us, and another answered it. The smoke from a nearby hearth rose into the air and thinned.
The mother watched me sit there. Her expression did not change. She tried to look away, which was rather difficult, considering I blocked much of her vision. Perhaps that had been the point. The minutes stretched more and the mother shot me worried glances that she might have hoped I didn’t see. I did. Then, she looked at me. Slowly, the expression on her face shifted.
Something about the woman’s shell cracked. I would admit the woman was a rather fierce opponent. Few had resisted any of my attacks for this long, but the result had always been inevitable.
Without a word, she shifted Marin in her arms and held him out -just slightly towards me. The boy was no longer being shielded. It was the smallest permission I had ever received. I rose.
“Sara.” I turned to the girl. She was ten paces behind me, watching with those very wide eyes. It was impressive she was still there, and she had been remarkably silent. “Stay there. Do not come closer until I allow you to.”
“But-”
“I do not know what will happen, and so you will stay there. That is not a request.” I tried to make my voice…gentle. The way I had heard Ash speak to children. It sounded strained from my tongue. The girl’s lower lip jutted out, but she stayed. It seemed this attack was rather effective against human children. I would remember that.
I knelt beside the mother and placed my left hand on Marin’s arm. His skin was warm beneath my fingers. That surprised me, though it should not have. Living bodies were warm. Even broken ones. “My power looks like a flame. Regardless of appearance, it is not one. It will not harm him.” I said. Better to warn the woman now, than have her interrupt needlessly. The woman faintly nodded.
I took a deep breath and pushed trickles of white Bloom into him. The impression came immediately, and it was wrong. When I had touched the near-dead fish by the river, there had been absence -a hollow where life had been, something I could fill. When I had reached into the phoenix, there had been a creature buried beneath corruption. Here, the boy was still there.
I could feel him distant and walled off. The Ink’s rejection had not destroyed what was inside him. There was a…barrier of a kind, something smooth, and behind it I could feel the faintest pulse of what the boy's soul must have been like. I had occasionally used Spells that could see inside the minds of others before, and so this sensation was not entirely alien to me. This was the child’s mind, and it was still whole.
My breath caught. I had prepared myself to find nothing. Perhaps that would have been better. Would have been more merciful than whatever the Ink had done to him here. The Cradle’s warmth hit the barrier and slid off without any resistance at all.
I pushed harder, with more mana, and even more focus. The brilliant white shone until my hand blazed against the boy’s small arm, and the barrier did not budge. The issue was not one of force. I knew that no matter how much force I had, it would not change the outcome -would not force the Cradle through.
I knew what this was. This was a decision from the System behind the Ink. The System had looked at this child and found him unworthy, and this wall was the shape of that declaration. It was no wonder nobody else had succeeded. My hands were shaking. I ignored them. I reached out with my right hand, physically stopped myself. No.
I took a deep breath and pushed more of what I had into the Cradle. The mana drained from my core in a rush, a torrent of white that I forced through the mark and into the boy. The light flared so brightly that the mother flinched beside me.
Through the barrier, I could almost feel him -could almost hear something, a child’s voice, or maybe just the memory of one. A boy who had been excited. A boy who had knelt before the Inker and held out his arm proudly and trusted that the world would give him something good. I reached for that voice. My mana clawed at the barrier’s surface, searching for a seam, a crack, for anything at all. There was nothing.
The light died. I made it so, lest I run out of mana entirely. The barrier remained, and it was untouched, as if I had not tried anything at all.
I knelt there with my hand still on the boy’s arm. My breathing was ragged. My vision swam and then steadied. The impression of the boy lingered. He was waiting, and at the end, for the smallest moment, he had hoped.
Damn it.
The mother was watching me. I did not need to look at her to know the shape of her face. She had allowed herself to hope too, just for a moment. I could feel the exact instant it left her. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, and the apology was for me. As if I were the one who needed consoling. As if my failure merited her comfort instead of her fury. The absurdity of it stung worse than the failure itself.
A small green glow caught my eye. Sara was there by my side. She had crept forward despite my instruction. The girl knelt a few paces from Marin, her right hand extended toward him. On her forearm, a tiny green Spark pulsed. It was almost nothing, so small I had never noticed it before.
Sara’s face was tight. The tendons in her small wrist stood out. Hers must have been an ability to heal, and she was trying. The green light touched Marin’s skin and did nothing at all.
“Child….” The mother swallowed. “I told you last time…it won’t take.” Her voice was very low. I heard it anyway.
I stared. The girl had done this before then -many times, I would guess. She had not told me this. A child’s Spark against the System. It was the most futile thing I had ever witnessed.
Sara’s hand dropped after a handful of seconds. The green faded and she panted. She looked at me and I felt something I hadn’t in a very long time: fear. Fear to meet her gaze, and what I might find inside it. There was no accusation in her eyes. She looked at me, the way she always did. The hope was still there. That was the worst part. I had failed, and this girl still hoped.
I rose to my feet. My legs were unsteady beneath me, though I kept my back straight. I turned from the hut and walked towards the closest open gate. Ash fell into step beside me. She did not block my path. The trees were close now. We were at the edge of the forest, where the village gave way to wilderness.
“Lysanthia.” I did not answer. “The Ink is tied to the System in some way,” Ash said quietly. “It is not a shame that you couldn’t heal him.” She paused. “You…you don’t look like you’ve given up.”
“It’s because I have not.” I kept walking. The forest was ten paces away. Then five.
“Giving hope where there is none,” Ash continued, and her voice was careful, “can be its own kind of cruelty. To that girl and to that mother.”
I stopped. “The System...” I said, my voice low. “Yes, I felt the System inside him. That is the reason why he will not be whole again.”
“So-”
“If the System has passed its judgement on that boy,” I said, “then the System and I have a disagreement. It would not be our first. I have overturned it before, and I simply will again.”
Ash stared at me for a long time. “And…you are sure about this?”
I raised my right hand in the air. A small trickle of black fire rose into the sky. “Yes. It is beneath me to boast about something I cannot do. I can do this. It is simply a matter of practice.”
Ash looked at me for a minute longer, and then the tension in her shoulders left her. “Alright. I’ll come with you then.”
I had not asked for her presence, though I did not mind it. I moved towards the forest-
“Lys!”
I turned back. Sara stood at the edge of the village, a dozen paces behind us. I did not know how long she had been there. “Are you….” Her voice was small. She looked at me, and then looked at the ground.
A Demon Queen had to make many great speeches. Had to announce every great campaign with an even grander address. It was the way of the Class as it was me. I reached for the words, and did not find them. Instead, I simply said the first thing on my mind. “Not yet, but soon. ” I said. “You will wait for me.”
The girl blinked, looked back up at me. I walked into the trees, and Ash followed beside me.