Day 455
For the first time in a while I wake alone - Lyssa, Tira, and Hella are nowhere to be found. Kaide is not yet out. It makes for a leisurely calm morning as I tend to my wing, dress, and send off a quick note to Magdalena to inform her that all is well here and how thankful I am to have met Uncle.
When I eventually rouse myself and wander out into the castle I find myself on a balcony with Bran and Amytri - the two people I was most interested in finding. Maybe Bran had a hand in that…who knows? The two of them are relaxing and drinking a beverage that looks like the night sky and tastes like mulled wine. Evidently Amytri may not be a healer but he has a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to restoration.
Amytri himself looks better but is coming to terms with the emotional aftermath of the attacks. Now that he has truly become king he has inevitably created some political opponents for himself that would not have been so outspoken before he took over. With Drakken pulling together all of our respective enemies he brought to bear a significant attempt on all of our success.
This, Bran recognizes as the natural order of fate. We are welding together so many disparate people that fate will resist on its own.
Fate pushes back against such a golden age.
But once we have brought the impossible thing into being he (and Thalien) believe that fate will simply get used to it and then work hard to keep it in being. At this, Amytri laughs.
Things that are hard are just hard!
I chide them both on using different words to talk about the same thing. Whether it is fate resisting or political opponents, we can all see that we will face challenges and once they have been overcome it will be easier to maintain than it was to build.
While Amytri prepares some of his delicious restorative potion for me, I pointedly ask after Yneir. Poor Bran still doesn’t know what to do with her. It would have been easier for him if she had seen a vision of their future in which he was changed and foreign, but she saw a good future. She saw a version of him that is good, one that he wants to be. Maybe he’ll mentor her and try to pass along some of Thalien’s knowledge, but I remind him that he doesn’t need to decide now. He tells me that he thinks we all owe her a lot (a point that I agree with wholeheartedly) and that he won’t push her away but it doesn’t mean they have fate together.
At least the next few days are clear - everyone here will make their way to Drognar with Haze and Onyx. Alder and Dawn will meet us there, I assume, having detoured to New Whitewater for a visit. Lyssa and I will fly to Dreamfall and collect up a few others before we all come together in Drognar for the wedding and coronation (and Summit, I think). Andstella and Jerun are still at the Grotto but they really ought to be returning to Dreamfall in the coming days. The timing will be tight but I’m sure we will manage.
All of which is dependent on the awakening of the bride, who I have been meaning to check on. I find her awake for the first time, still weak and exhausted. As I make her drink some of Amytri’s restorative brew I list out all the attacks and reassure her that everyone is fine (aside from the losses in Whitewater, which I enumerate). Nina does me no surprises by immediately asking how she can help and I feel that if she were just a little stronger perhaps I’d have to hold her down to the bed and put her to sleep again.
It does not take much to convince her to stay put and heal, but it’s endearing that it took anything at all. She is eager to return to Drognar, a place that feels more like home than New Whitewater for her now. She says she misses the raucous dwarven singing and the presence of trolls. I leave her dozing again and send for her parents before taking the rest of the day to myself.
With the latter half of the day Kaide and I are finally able to find a forge and work on the crowns for our new royals. Watching her design them is a treat, seeing the traditional dwarven patterns that she sketches (discarding the elvish and human designs at my suggestion) and how we’ll embed the sunstone into the metal and imbue them with magic. Endurance for Torrick, healing for Nina.
Heavy is the weight on a ruler’s head. Strength to bear it.
Weighty are the hearts of a ruler’s people. Kindness to shelter them.
Our last evening in Solace feels like a party of just our closest. Lyssa takes charge of the kitchen and is assisted by Wayla, the only other person she allows to contribute. The otherwise domineering human woman has certainly met her match in Lyssa and I listen at the door for some time with amusement to hear her mumbling and Lyssa’s calm and demanding instructions.
Amytri tends to the drinks and what he makes is suitably delightful for the food - a golden sparkling drink that transmutes tiny amusing effects in the drinkers. Hella’s hair goes iridescent with rainbow colours while my own eyes glow with golden light.
Day 456
The flight to Dreamfall is easy despite my inability to steer. I had once theorized that perhaps we could pull fae through the air like balloons on ropes but it is much, much easier to simply hold hands. I can’t remember the last time I held hands for an entire day.
Lyssa continues on to Dreamfall while I ground myself beside the encampment on the outskirts that houses all 200 summer fae who fell victim to the withering curse. The mood is somber and it isn’t until I actually begin examining our patients that I remember that many of these fae don’t even know me. Attending fae of day and night explain who I am while I sift through magic and look for connections to Miriam’s injury, the knife, and what Renelli told me. How strange I must look - an enormous elf-fae missing a wing who swept in and demanded to examine those who had fallen most ill!
Only recently healing was a very intimate magic for me - bonded with blood and untangling arcane curses on an individual. But this is on a far different scale and I have to treat it like a war with reconnaissance and resource-management. 200 patients is too much for me to cure with blood and brute force.
Renelli was right that this magic is targeting their songs. Wherever I find withering curses I find it clinging to summer songs and whatever style of life they are currently leading. We could excise those songs, much like Miriam’s flesh, but they would lose all memories attached to those songs. At a minimum they would lose the past year of their lives. At most they would lose all of the times they had been summer, all of the times they had been wizard or mystic or scoundrel.
Instead we could try disinfecting the songs, perhaps storing them temporarily in gems while the curse ate itself for lack of a target, then returning them. The songs would be shallower than what they had lived but it would be better than nothing.
We still have time. I’d like to find a solution that isn’t just better-than-nothing. I’m absorbed in this thought when I am tackled to the ground by a flying assailant of a son - Liliales at top speed accompanied by Lyssa and Camellia.
He is so warm and energetic, full of life as I crush him to me and pin him down for a second to remind him that he may have gotten me just this once but I’m still bigger than him. I hear all about him and Miriam and how sorry he is to have put people in danger, but Camellia laughs at this too and waves it off as the natural behaviour of someone who associates with me. The two of them are so full of compliments for one another - it’s adorable. My little illusionist and my radiant knight.
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