Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen (64 page)

“I thank you for the use of your gates,” the Queen said kindly. “They have been most useful.”

“No problem,” Setsuna mumbled, a stick of candy in her mouth.

“I would like to ask you to lend me your skills a while longer. I need more precision than our trees can offer. I want you to use your gates to attach spores to every other ship only.”

“Why every other ship, lass?” Captain Evere asked as he shoved a quadrant into a cannon muzzel to check its elevation.

Queen Forsythia turned to look out at the airship fleet. “Because if we infect them all, they will leave.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Privet asked.

Queen Forsythia slowly shook her head. “No, we want them to stay. Their morale is cracking, we must allow it to break completely.”

Setsuna pulled the candy out of her mouth and dropped down to the ground, balancing on one toe. “I'll help you, but I have a condition.”

“What is it?” Queen Forsythia asked detachedly.

Setsuna pointed a green painted fingernail at Privet. “He has to take me on a date.”

Privet snickered. “She'd never going to agree to that, don’t you remember how she...”

“Agreed,” the Queen said coldly.

“Agreed?” Privet repeated. “Why would you...?”

“Because the forest requires it,” came the icy response.

Privet took a step back, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But...you promised that...look, you can’t just agree to a date like this on my behalf.”

“I believe I just did.”

“Yay!” Setsuna jumped up and down and waved her arms around happily. “You're gon’ buy me ice cream, and I want to go to the top of one of those tree-city things, and you have to introduce me to your family so they can meet their new daughter-in-law!”

Privet was almost too stunned to respond. “You changed...I followed you back and you changed...”

As Spirea slowly came to consciousness, she had the distinct sensation of walking down a hallway. It felt like dying in reverse. Everything she was, every memory, every decision. Everything that had been scattered to the wind had slowly coalesced again, drawing nearer and nearer to each other, until finally all of the diverse parts that made up the sum of who she was began interacting once again.

Where am I?

The last thing she could clearly recall was lying on the stone altar in the vaults beneath Thesda. The day she had been dreading all of her life had arrived. The day that the demon inhabiting her grandmother took her as its new host. She had been unmade, her very being torn out whole and replaced with something else. There was no cure. There was no hope. That should have been the end, but here she was.

Is this the afterlife? Have I been reincarnated?

Spirea’s eyes were already open. She could not close them. Tapestries and banners printed in a language she did not understand passed by her. Decorative sheets of water trickled down over the stone of the walls, falling into a sump along the baseboard.

I can’t move my eyes, they are moving without me.

“Has Lord Hinsekis arrived yet?” Spirea asked, looking over the armored figure before her.

Who said that?

“He awaits your beckon, Duchess,” a guard answered as he opened the doors to let her pass.

Spirea could feel her bare feet touching the cold marble of the royal hall, she could feel the touch of the fine fabrics of her black dress against her skin. She could feel the weight of the silver scepter in her hand, but she could not make her body move.

It’s like I’m being worn. Something is wearing me like I’m a suit!

Spirea walked up and arrogantly sat herself down upon the golden throne in the center of the hall. Even through the fabric of her dress the metal surface felt cool. To her right, stood six men. Their clothes were of the finest material, yet their faces were troubled. They bowed with a mixture of fear and admiration. To her left, an oversized pitcher plant, twice as tall as a man. Like a partially opened blossom, it sat facing upwards in its pot, its pitcher filled with digestive juices. Spirea could feel its satisfaction and hunger emanating off of it.

The doors at the far end swung open. A squad of palace guards wearing black uniforms brought in a pair of bewildered men.

“Lord Hinsekis, Lord Ewjell, thank for for coming to see me at this late hour.” Spirea smirked.

“This is an outrage!” Minister Ewjell barked, straightening his robes.

Minister Hinsekis kept a cooler head. Straightening his dark, oiled hair, he looked around at the other Ministers. “Why are they all here? Is this a cabinet meeting?” he asked.

Spirea shook her head and accepted a goblet of wine from a cowering servant. “No, this is just between you and me. They are here because they know which side they are on.”

I know that voice. It’s my grandmother’s voice. So, I’m not dead, this is just her body now, but why am I still here?

“And why are we here?” Lord Ewjell huffed, his thick mustache twitching back and forth.

Spirea took her time draining the contents of the goblet.

I can feel it running down her throat.

“You are here to make a decision,” Spirea explained. “To decide which side you are on.” To emphasize the point, she tossed the bronze goblet into the air. It fell down inside the pitcher plant, giving off a horrible hissing sound as the digestive juices fizzled the goblet away to nothing.

“When the Queen hears about this...”

Spirea stood up before her throne. “The Queen is a peasant!” Her words echoed powerfully though the hall. “When the Queen speaks, everyone checks the law books and judicial records. Do you know why they double check? They verify because those dead pieces of paper mean more to them than her words do. The power to rule over others does not come from some chair or scepter. The divine right to rule is something you must be born with, and she doesn’t have it!”

I remember hearing my grandmother speak like this before. It always scared me.

As Spirea looked down on Lord Ewjell and Hinsekis, they visibly withered before her. Her black eyes bore them down to nothing. So overwhelming was her presence that without being bade, they dropped down to one knee before her.

Spirea smiled cruelly.

I can feel her excitement. I can feel her satisfaction. It’s being forced into me. I can’t shut it out.

“You have made your choice,” Spirea announced. “Take your place with the others.”

The two cowed men rose up and walked towards the other Ministers. “May I ask what happened to Lord Uncan and Acklew?” Lord Hinsekis asked, his voice now deferential.

Spirea at back down on the throne. “They made their choice as well.”

The pitcher plant gave out a rumbling burp.

The door to the hall opened at the far end. “What’s going on in here, where are the regular guards?” The woman who entered carried a scepter like the one in Spirea’s hand, and a silver crown on her head. In dress, they were nearly copies of one another.

“All hail Erin Strelan, Queen of Stretis,” Spirea taunted.

Stretis, is that where we are?

“What is the meaning of this? Why have the Agnita Kaito been reassigned to posts all over the League?” Queen Strelan demanded.

Spirea rested her cheek on her hand. “Surely the meaning is plain. The Agnita Kaito were too loyal to you to keep together in one body, but too useful to eliminate.”

“Guards, get in here!” Queen Strenlan called out, but none came to her aid. She looked around in fear, suddenly looking very small and alone in the middle of the hall. She tried to make eye contact with the Ministers, but they all avoided her gaze.

“The game is over, Erin. You have lost,” Spirea taunted.

I’m being controlled. And it is not just my body, either. My heart feels...

“The people will never...”

“The people can’t stand you,” Spirea bellowed powerfully, the tapestries flapping as she stood up from her throne. “You are an embarrassment to this people, barely worth a historical footnote.”

Queen Strelan looked around fearfully. “But the new assault on Wysteria was your plan...”

Spirea laughed. “My plan? My plan was to send you and your closest supporters away for a while. Nevertheless, the strategy I gave you to attack Wysteria with sea-water would succeed in the hands of any but the most inept of leaders.”

I can feel her. She’s angry that this Erin came back so soon.

“Why are you here?” Spirea spat. “The invasion is just beginning. Did you think you could just stroll back here and assume everything went smoothly? A real leader stays close to the situation so she can make quick decisions.”

Erin stepped back and looked around furtively. “E-everything seemed to be going well...”

“They defeated you the last time by cutting off your communications. The whole point of sending you there personally was so that you could be on-site to make decisions should the situation change. This just shows how deeply incompetent you are. You were never worthy of the scepter you hold. It is my time to take your place.”

She’s already positioned herself to take the throne here? How much time has passed? What year is this?

Queen Strelan took another step back. With trembling hands, she held up her scepter before her. “Just because you have a scepter doesn’t mean you rule.”

Spirea smiled wickedly. “You're right of course. The rule of Stretis requires more than just a scepter.”

Spirea touched a rune on her scepter and the tip extended out into a long blade, dripping with venom. There was a flash of movement, followed by the clang of metal against stone. It happened so fast, no one else had been able to follow it with their eyes. When they found her, Spirea was kneeling over Erin, who had been forced down onto her back, the blade piercing through her chest and down into the stone beneath her.

Erin looked up in shock. The venom moved swiftly through her body, leaving squiggly black trails all over her skin. Her eyes trembled in horror, and then she was gone.

I...I can feel her pleasure from the kill. Her emotions are pouring into me as if they were my own.

Satisfied, Spirea stood up over her kill and turned around. The ministers and guards all fell down on their knees.

“Hail, Queen Sotol,” they chanted in unison. As they did so, a shadow seemed to fall over the room.

In the back of Spirea’s mind, the real Spirea curled up and wept.

Why? Why couldn’t they just have let me die?

Dev'in screamed as he grabbed the metal brazier. The material twisted effortlessly in his grip. Holding one end like a club, he smashed it into the thin layer of black tar beneath him over and over again. Blair stood motionless before him, black droplets of souls splattering on his face. His needle-like eyes twitched with the faintest hint of fear.

Dev'in tossed the brazier aside. “Did you know,” he began between heavy breaths, “that the scholars of Timmeron believe that the body’s connection to the soul is in the blood? When the blood is lost, the soul is released, and through the blood we pass on a piece of our souls to our children.”

Blair stood motionless, trying to hide his fear.

Dev'in walked over to the realm map, expertly carved with all twelve seas and all seventy-eight islands. Making a fist, he punched the stone and broke it in half with his bare hand. “However,” he continued, his voice howling. “The monks of Whilinham teach that the soul is anchored to the heart. For it is our passions that make us who we are. It is our connections to others that define us, and all of that comes from the heart.”

Dev'in grabbed the stone tablet and knocked it over, allowing it to land with a splat into the black shakes at their feet. “After living more than a thousand years, I have developed a theory of my own. I believe that that the place the soul and the body connect is in the skin, specifically the skin of the face.”

Dev'in took a moment to look at his wavering reflection in the black liquid beneath him. “I don’t even recognize the face staring back at me, nor the monster hidden behind those young eyes. I can’t even recall what my first face looked like. My real face.”

Dev'in walked up to Blair and slowly circled him. Blair stood still, staring forward. “I think it’s better this way,” Dev'in explained as he circled. “My first body would be horrified at the monster I have become, the terrible things I have done. Looking at this strange reflection makes it easier somehow. Makes it simpler to do things that would have disgusted me before.”

Blair slowly opened his dry mouth. “With the ruper spice facility destroyed, we have no way of replacing our depleted supply of black shakes.”

Dev'in raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think me so easily thwarted? There are many options still available to us, but they all carry dangers. They are all...distasteful.”

Blair swallowed and considered his words carefully. “I prefer to think of them as an acquired taste. If the gods did not want us to experience the distasteful, then they would have made the world without them. Who are we to turn our noses at the gift of experience?”