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UE Rewrite: B3 — 11.5. Divinity's Fall
🕑 Added 2024-09-06 23:20:32 +0000 UTCPoV:
1. Butter ( Our Beloved High Queen of the Evening Star!)
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Butter could sense the weight of Snow’s soul just behind her, struggling to remain conscious in the overpowering presence of the entity of death before them.
Poor thing, she communicated to Adoncia as Seg’tharis gathered his thoughts to finally tell the history of his people. The poor thing is trying her best to be brave, and credit where credit is due; not many would be able to face a higher being infused by the essence of death.
Her aquamarine eyes flicked to the white-haired woman’s determined expression, as she shifted from behind Butter to stand beside her, admiring the fire that still burned despite the constant barrage of Death Energy flooding the area. The Fablekin had been thrust into this horrific mess compared to what her soul was accustomed to.
Adoncia’s concern sparked through their private connection, the thin and tight-skinned Supreme Chief no doubt listening in on it, given his strength and understanding of spiritual forces. “Should I take her out? There’s so much more we need to learn about how Earth changed, and…”
No need to worry. She’ll survive this, Butter projected to Adoncia, soothing her concerns with a confident and calculating note, and her soul will be all the stronger for it. I know Snow will be critical for the future to connect us with things we’ll need to bring back to the empire from your former world. So tell me if you see her aging too fast for my light to counter.
“Yes, High Queen.”
Her gaze returned to Seg’tharis as he lifted his hand, and with a casual flick of his wrist, emerald fog began to swirl around the room. It was familiar to Butter; her twin’s bread and butter. However, Snow could be turned to dust in an instant if she stepped half a meter away.
As the fog thickened, she projected more of the Utelira’s Life Force. The faint shimmer of the golden light pulsing outward, forming a protective bubble around Snow and herself. Adoncia kept her distance from the budding force, listening intently in the corner and relaying everything they heard through the Nexus to White and Mika.
The fog took form, and the room transformed before their eyes, the stone walls melting away to reveal a different world entirely. Butter’s head straightened while taking in the ancient, primeval jungle, dotted in deep purples and dark browns, untouched by time, its dense foliage shimmering under a greenish-gold light in the heavens.
“This is where it all began,” Seg’tharis murmured, his voice low and haunted. “Fifteen thousand years ago… When Utelira and I were but children. Mortal… Weak.”
As he spoke, the jungle seemed to come alive, the golden toads, younger and more vibrant, smaller, their bodies lithe and agile as they moved through the trees. They weren’t the warriors she knew from the valley, but rather a peaceful, almost innocent race, their lives dedicated to the natural cultivation of their land of big insects they dominated, to the nurturing of their precious, pristine waters.
“Back then, we lived in harmony with our world, the cycle of life and death,” Seg’tharis continued, his fading eyes fixated on the early days of his youth. “The rivers, the trees, the very earth itself…it all sustained us in whatever we needed or desired. We were content.”
Butter felt a tug of sadness pull at her as she watched the idyllic scene for their early race play out. She could feel their joy, their laughter, their connection to the world around them. They weren’t nearly as sophisticated as they were now. They’d evolved. But of course they had; nothing good lasts forever. She knew what was coming next.
The air shifted, growing colder, darker. Butter instinctively increased her life projection, knowing this part of the story would bring with it the familiar stench of death and trigger more of Seg’tharis’ corruption to spike.
A giant Crystal appeared from nowhere, seemingly instantly—35-meters tall, hexahedron-shaped diamond, and a light creamy color. It hovered just above the dark treeline, its faceted surface gleaming with a sickly, pulsating light in its ethereal state.
“It appeared one night,” Seg’tharis said, his voice barely above a whisper. “We didn’t know what it was. My parents thought it was a gift, something sent from the great azure lands beyond the horizon to aid us. But they were wrong, and my people would never be the same again.”
The scene shifted, faster this time, showing the familiar multi-colored activation of the stained glass-like dome that expanded across the entire valley, blotting out the heavens and isolating them. From the four Crystal Hubs spawned creatures that made Butter straighten and Snow scoot closer to her chair, bumping into it, lips parting in disbelief as only eight things emerged.
Tall, spindly figures with crystalline armor and glowing red eyes that stood on ten legs, towering above the treeline, hundreds of meters in the air. Wielding powers utterly beyond the simple toads, the horrific race marched through the jungle like gods, rounding up the primitive ri’bot and shackling them in elemental chains of ice and earth.
“The Jestelia,” Seg’tharis whispered, his tone bitter. “Servants and vessels of an alien power beyond the veil that controlled them like puppets to act in their place, and we were powerless to stop them. They took us from our world, dragged us back to their cursed lands, and bound us in servitude.”
Butter leaned forward, intrigued by this twist in the story. This wasn’t just a tale of conquest thus far; this was a story of enslavement, but that was sure to change soon.
“Initially, the dark masters controlling them needed us to tend to the Jestelia’s hatchery,” Seg’tharis said, his eyes locking with Butter’s. “For our unique anti-toxin attributes allowed us to survive in the contaminated waters where other creatures could not. I listened. I adapted. I learned. And I grew to understand the strength we could unlock within our own souls.”
“And the Crystals?” Butter asked, watching scene after scene of the powerful Jestelia race, puppeteered by their dark masters beyond the dimensional veil, entering portal after portal to collect more items, creatures, and powers to fuel their conquest. “What were these dark masters after?”
A wry tilt moved the deathly face of the giant golden toad as his tired eyes shifted to the giant creatures with their crystal tentacles and jagged, diamond teethed maws.
“I never discovered that…and maybe they were running away from something even more terrifying than them, because one day, out of nowhere, the Jestelia died—all of them—and the complex beings behind them, pulling their strings…vanished without a trace.”
He waved his hand, pointing up and making Butter’s lips part in awe. A giant Crystal, 200-meters tall—the largest yet—appeared in the toxic gray sky as Seg’tharis spoke.
“A Crystal of this size is capable of engaging a whole landmass of a planet in the conflict, and its rhombicuboctahedron shape is one of only two I have ever witnessed in my fifteen thousand years of living.”
He stood to look up at the colossal 26-faced object, pulsing with power that made Butter throat constrict. “Its black hue marked it as something impossible to overcome, is what we learned through our own Crystal conquests. The more sides they have, the closer to higher dimensions it is, and this one…goes beyond the third or fourth, yet it appeared to us…
“At first, I thought the Jestelia puppeteers had finished their work and had no more need for us or them…but now I do not believe such a fable… Not after experiencing it for the second time, and on their footing. I learned the truth. About what actually happened to our first captors when that black star hung in the sky.”
Butter rose to join him, clasping her hands behind her back, and lightly tugging Snow’s arm to prompt her to join her as the Fable froze, ashen face skyward at the obsidian object looming over them.
“So, they did not control the Crystals but knew when they were preparing to spawn, as you eventually did, and they tried but couldn’t escape the eventual fate of being conquered by something stronger than them?”
A shiver ran down Butter’s frame while watching the abyssal object hovering in solitude, the fractured dome above entirely white instead of the rainbow collage of colors she’d seen before. There was something threatening in that black sphere she couldn’t quite put into words, yet her instincts told her it wasn’t something to be underestimated.
“You know what these Crystals true purpose is?”
The ancient toad’s hollow gaze drifted to the decaying corpse of the Death Faction Head he’d taken over, yet his face didn’t show sorrow or pity but contempt for something weak.
“…You’re getting ahead of the story, Lady of Conquest.”
A small chortle shook Butter’s frame as she glanced around at the lifeless Jestelia, their souls likely no longer able to support themselves and being crushed under their own bloated weight once their dark masters ceased to empower them.
“Fair enough. So, what happened to you after your captors vanished?”
Seg’tharis’s voice grew cold, his expression hardening while pointing at the above pulsing cavity in space-time. “A dark orb fell from the Crystal—a cocoon of some kind that sank into the land—and in a flash of black light, everything changed. We’d been taken to a new planet—this planet—where black diamonds fell from the sky… The Black Desert.”
Butter’s vision narrowed, recalling a piece from Shade’s story and things Quin talked about regarding her former Ke on his journey to the far north, likely to destroy one of Shade’s prison locks. It bought images of the mountain-sized dragon, the Avana, who had come to reclaim something they’d taken. Yet, as Quin described the tale, Ke’Thra’Ma made his way through an obsidian desert that swallowed the weak and sent nightshades to haunt them, awake or asleep.
“We did not break or return to our old ways,” he continued, shifting his posture to show them traveling south, escaping the desert of glass shards that ripped their skin, Seg’tharis and Utelira taking leadership. None of the terrors that Quin described seemed to afflict them. “We’d endured much…and had our eyes opened to a thirst to never be used again, to never be puppets as the Jestelia had been.”
The death entity showed scenes of the giant crystalline creatures wreaking havoc across hundreds of worlds. “Yet, they’d been creatures of enormous power compared to us. Our only answer was to continue where their dark masters left off now that our soul potential was unlocked. With what little we’d learned from the experiments done on us, we expanded in our own ways.”
The mist swirled to show a place of elemental power, life-budding and life-stealing trees. “…A voice spoke to me when I was in the Black Desert, and from that orb that fell from the Crystal—that dark pulse—I unlocked the power to absorb life, while Utelira could raise life.”
“Shade’s voice,” Butter mumbled, her gaze falling to the earth. “Was he who came from the Crystal and became trapped by this world?”
“Not in the slightest,” Seg’tharis chuckled as if it were the funniest thing he’d heard in his long life, reverting them to the previous scene of the black star in the sky. “Shade, as you know him, was a prisoner of this planet who was here long before we arrived, and he has great knowledge…but he could not hope to face…that. No, Shade needed us to draw the Crystals to this planet in order to provide him more pawns to manipulate for his ends, yet he was a pawn all the same.”
Butter’s fingers tightened against her wrist, thinking back to their experience with the Crystal and the one within this valley of life and death. “So, they can be manipulated to appear? How so? They respond to rapidly growing civilizations or creatures?”
“They do, to an extent,” Seg’tharis muttered, showing himself in the hail of black diamonds, wearing the crystal-like shells of the dead Jestelia for protection while hauling their lifeless corpses across the Black Desert. “There are other, more sure methods, though. They are drawn to those who enjoy conflict. Shade guided me out of the Black Desert and Shadow Lands to its south, to a place of ancient wisdom, abandoned, and mysterious.
“I cannot say who they were or how they disappeared. Shade would not elaborate. We adapted what was there into our expanding spirits. And over time, we learned more about the technology we’d managed to take with us from the Jestelia artifacts that had been transported with us to this world.
“We mastered their genetic and spiritual alteration technology. We used it against the enemies that rose against us in this land—the stupid creatures who were like us…before our enslavement. Primitive…weak.”
“I see,” she hummed, her focus shifting from them to the wide-eyed Fingers taking in the history of their species and scenes he showed her. “The Jestelia’s masters opened the way for you to replace the Jestelia, who had reached their evolutionary peak. Despite their power, they were capped, and you could have advanced further…”
She reflected on what she felt and what little he’d given as hints to fill in the gaps; the information felt like tugging puzzle pieces out of the void. Not exactly the knowledge of the events themselves but fundamental principles she knew involving souls.
“The Jestelia spirits could no longer sustain the burden to create a new generation of spirits for budding Intelligences without them collapsing, and yours was strong, fresh, and capable of higher growth potential. Perhaps you could have grown to the point that they needed to survive the fight with the black star.”
Butter’s smile faded as she watched the scene unfold and Seg’tharis’ bitter smile deepened. “They had as much of a chance of defeating that thing as we did… We were all tricked. Shade, us…the blinding sun that we willingly walked into.”
It clicked in Butter’s mind, her gut tightening while watching Seg’tharis and Utelira conquer Crystal after Crystal, experimenting on the multiple creatures they took from worlds, as they had, or those they found on their own continent. The Crystals always came to them, so they rarely ventured further beyond their initial lands, welcoming the conquest to take their next victims—they embraced warfare.”
“You created all of the advanced races on this continent,” she mumbled, watching the quen’talrat being mutated, body and spirit.
The Nalveans and others in the flashes of scenes grew to be powerful pawns, the scenes sped past too quickly for her to recognize them all, thousands of years, until the ri’bot reached their zenith, five millennia after Seg’tharis and his sister had been kidnapped from their original home.
“…You became unknowing slaves to your own thirst for conquest. Manipulated, as your former masters had done, and you were none the wiser.” Her narrowed eyes shifted to the aged, ragged toad. “Is this some sort of roundabout warning for me to cease my ambition?”
“Not in the least,” Seg’tharis mused, the thirst for war and battle gleaming in his eyes, despite his haggard body. “On the contrary, I hope to see at least some of my pathetic descendants retake the birthright Utelira and I left. You will shake battlefields, and the Supreme Chiefs’ legacy will continue through you.”
“How greedy,” Butter snickered, noticing the two Fingers rubbing their sunken chins at their god’s words.
He lifted his gaze to the sky, their advanced empire now spanning wide on the continent, and above into the sky; the Supreme Chiefs, an army of hundreds of millions of higher beings, sitting on the clouds to stare at their creations below, yet…they were also trapped by the boundaries this world had once had—boundaries Shade had no doubt corroded over the past ten thousand years.
“We hadn’t even scratched the surface of the ancient powers within this planet,” Seg’tharis muttered, gazing out across the lands, “but we battled a few potent races to our south to take the place we had… The scars of that battle are the Great Ruby Lakes, as the Nalveans call them,” he said with a wistful note at the battles of his youth.
“However, the Crystals always gave us what we wanted in the way of war, and the many shields around the planet prevented us from going further into the solar system…but we were close to figuring out how to break some of those shells, to freeing Shade from more of his shackles. We were…magnificent.”
Longing and anger burned in the entity of death’s gaze as he took them high above the land to show a totally changed landscape from what Butter now knew it as. They now were among the heavenly host of the sky-living golden toads, overlooking their slave empires of mutated soldiers below them. Yet, there was something above even them.
A colossal Crystal materialized in the heavens, hanging like a fourth moon to the other celestial spheres in the sky. No one was smiling.
Murmurs rolling around the potent higher ri’bot who stood at the top of the food chain in this section of the world during their time. Snow seemed to be adapting due to Butter’s empowering aura, her sweats and shakes easing while taking in the valuable information that she could return to Earth with, listening to Adoncia’s soft translations in the corner.
Utelira was the one to speak in this ancient recount, ten thousand years ago, her voice exhibiting caution. “I do not like this, Seg’tharis. We may have the power to combat our old masters, but how can we be sure they were not conquered like we had been, and that is how we were freed? The highest number of sides we’ve faced is ten on a Crystal, and we lost a third of our host to their weird Eldritch forces.”
Seg’tharis roared with laughter, most of the other Supreme Chiefs doing the same. “It has been five thousand years since then, Utelira. Once we adapted to their powers, I wiped that Eldritch civilization of life in hours. This is our next challenge!”
The Life Binder looked unconvinced, staring off to the north. “We cannot even make it through the Shadow Lands to reach the Black Desert due to the dark force permeating its field or the shell around the planet and its oppressive moons… It is a problem only for us after we ascend to the next dimension—there is something…wrong. What if we’ve made a mistake? What if the Whispering Darkness is wrong.”
Her frown deepened as dark chuckles came from below them, emanating from inside the planet and making Butter’s nose twist with agitation upon hearing the trapped entity speak so liberally in the past through his earthy prison.
“The Black Orb festers within this planet, threatening us all, Utelira. It slumbers, though. If it had stirred, I would have warned you. Have I led you astray yet? You have done great things with the power I’ve guided you to, and this is a chance to obtain something to destroy what sleeps beneath the Black Desert. Do not shrink now, Life Binder.”
Seg’tharis emanate a wave of Death Energy that turned the sky green and caused the mortal creatures below to quiver. He was ready for war.
“We have reached our zenith here in this oppressive bubble, Sister. We must break the seals on this prison planet to fully conquer it. We are supreme, breaking the barrier of dimensions, elements, life, and death! Were you not able to restore our fallen brothers and sisters against those Eldritch entities with our newly adapted technology? If we are not ready now, then when will we be? Keep focused!”
Utelira breathed out a heavy sigh before turning her gaze to the colossal twenty-six-sided gateway. “It is black, Seg’tharis…which means we are highly unlikely to win. We know the colors represent the strength of each side’s strongest entity. When we conquer worlds who have Black Crystals, they can hardly comprehend us… Never have we faced one in reverse, much less with this many sides, except… No, I suppose we don’t have a choice. We must fight.”
The Supreme Chief of Death made a zig-zag motion across her chest with confidence. “We have risen beyond anything we dreamed possible when we were young and weak. No more. Our legacy will continue forever… Believe me, Sister. We are strong.”
The scene stopped, and Butter looked skyward as Seg’atharis snorted at his own words. “How foolish I was…”
“Hmm. You mentioned that not only you and Shade, but the force on the other side was tricked… You were puppets of the Black Star, I take it?”
Seg’tharis didn’t speak, only showed them preparing to enter the Crystal, their powerless, mutated servants praying to them on the surface. The Supreme Chiefs prepared their heavenly army to enter the ominous black Crystal. However, Butter noticed an important difference in the two rhombicuboctahedra she’d seen.
The first one was utterly devoid of all colors of image…but this one has some kind of divine world attached to it… A perfect world of light and warmth that is hard for me to currently visualize. It’s very different from the sensation my subconscious is looking for…but similar. Somehow, Seg’tharis can recreate the feeling it gave him, which is different to me.
Holding a hand to her breast, she felt a thump in her soul that quickened her blood.
There’s something more there that isn’t shown… Something higher…far, far stronger. But it’s not malevolent or bloodthirsty… It’s curious…and filled with boundless pity for whatever comes through.
In a flash of deadly elements and potent hurricane-like forces, the ri’bot charged through the gateway, ready for combat to lay waste to this world. Swapping locations, the Supreme Chief of Death took her to their formation on the other side, in what appeared to be a glorious world of eternal light that made her heart seize and Snow cough.
“I…I can’t see anything but light,” she managed to say, relief coming over her rather than fear. “It’s not blinding, but…I feel at peace.”
Butter looked up, gripping Utelira’s Eye to strengthen her link to the Supreme Chief’s divine power, peeling back the layers to squint into the blazing glory.
“A plane of existence completely filled with Positive Energy…not a world?”
“Is that what it was?” Seg’tharis whispered, not sounding as bitter now but in awe and filled with respect. “We brought everything we had… All the power we’d gathered, and all we saw was a single spark of light… Half of us were gone—spirits and bodies vaporized to their very Intelligences to be sent back through the Crystal.”
Butter glanced to her right, where a single blinding light descended from a blazing star of glory in the sky, and, channeling as much of Utelira’s power as she currently could, the veil peeled back ever so slightly. A blazing angel was revealed, wrapped in glory, with six wings spread out—no sword slash or attack—her mere presence vaporizing the Supreme Chiefs.
Seg’tharis pointed back to the Crystal, no hub or other gateway visible, only the giant rhombicuboctahedron, and it was red instead of black for the angel’s side.
The toad spoke in a resigned whisper, “And then…it awoke and attacked while the Blazing Star was distracted by us.” The golden ri’bot’s nose twitched with anger as darkness took the field, and the winged figure’s radiance surged, fighting back the shadows only to be pulled in a swirling vortex back to the ri’bot’s world and out of the divine realm.
“I understand now,” Butter mumbled, following the Supreme Chiefs as they were yanked back with the angel, used as anchors, unknowingly linked to the Black Orb when it had taken them to this world just under five thousand years ago.
“It was trapping you, herding you for this moment—to manipulate the Crystals by shaping your souls in just the right way for this conquest… It used you as bait and as a link to ambush one of these angels in this divine plane…to pull her out and momentarily disorient her in order to strike a blow it normally couldn’t.”
Above them, the Crystal started to crack, intense solar light overshadowing the darkness before parts of the rhombicuboctahedron object began to melt and evaporate. The divine figure in the sky flared out in a blast of light, dispersing the shadows, only for the dimming winged figure to fall out of the heavens to the north—to the Shadow Lands—while hundreds of millions of Supreme Chiefs fell with her.
Butter followed their slow descent, far beyond normal eyes to the lands between the ri’bot’s vast territory and the Black Desert. Shade’s laughter rolled out of the planet as the Supreme Chiefs were about to hit the solid earth for the first time in over a thousand years.
“What planning, only for it to fail at the last second… How splendid! And to even use me… Scattered to the wind, wounded, and crawling back into your hole. You’re vulnerable. I can be patient… And you’ve done wonderful work, Supreme Chiefs. It is time I collect my payment.”
Rumbling shook the crust in a terrible earthquake, and the rock split open only in those places the screaming and utterly drained Supreme Chiefs fell, swallowing them.
Seg’tharis’ voice was heavy in the slowed scene, watching his people being welcomed into the planet’s depths. “I’m not sure exactly what happened next… If there were beings beneath the earth that did…this to us or if it was Shade himself, but when we regained consciousness, this was our prison, and those who survived this fate…”
His baleful eyes drifted to the two tight-muscled Fingers hovering by the corner. “This is my legacy… Weakness spread across the land in their tiny factions.”
The fog began to dissipate, the jungle apocalyptic scenes fading back into the cold stone of the death fortress. Butter exhaled slowly, the weight of Seg’tharis’s story and power settling over her like a heavy cloak as the dense atmosphere thinned. Snow shifted beside her, her breath shaky but steady while Adoncia felt more alive than ever. The Fablekin had heard it all, and Butter knew this experience would change her forever.
Seg’tharis turned to face her fully now, his eyes burning with an ancient fire that spoke of betrayal and hatred, even for his own descendants, who failed his expectations. “You know what comes next, Lady of Conquest. You understand better than most the cost of power, the sacrifices that must be made… What I desire most.”
Butter smirked, her aquamarine eyes sparkling with mischief as new dots and mysteries danced before her. “Oh, I do love a good sacrifice,” she purred, standing tall as the Life Energy within her pulsed brighter. “But the question is, Seg’tharis…are your people willing to follow your will when they learn what you really think about them? The end of this path is a tragic one most would fight.”
His eyes were living coals of passion and ambition that was denied him as the body of the leader of his cult began to turn to dust, the gem in his chest crumbling away, and the golden figure in front of her faded into nothingness.
“Does it matter what they want? You’ve already chosen, despite the differences in our views, we end in the same place… Know that you have my blessing, Butter, Head of Life and Death. Avenge our betrayal and lift our true posterity to the glory we deserved. Free my sister of the burden she has had to bear for over ten thousand years. Your body waits for you below… So show them what conquest means, High Queen of the Evening Star.”
The two Fingers dropped to their knees, their bony frames bowed to their dead god as he dissipated into nothing but a naked Intelligence, losing all his unholy power to enter whatever gate lay beyond the veil.
“From dust to dust,” they chanted. “All return to His belly.”
Yeah, I’m not going to comment on that, Butter internally mused to Adoncia.
With the dissipating of the hyper dense Death Energy that permeated the space due to Seg’tharis’ presence, Snow began to recover. Butter withdrew her strong grip over Utelira’s Life Force, allowing the restless Life Binder to settle back into her peaceful slumber.
“Well that was dramatic!” she cheerily chimed, hopping over to stare at the pile of dust that now covered the floor. “I’d give it a B- on theatrics—mmm, maybe a solid B.”
Voice strained, Adoncia walked over to give a respectful bow to the corpse. “High Queen, isn’t that a bit…disrespectful? Shouldn’t we respect their culture?”
Aren’t I? She asked with a lifted eyebrow at the First Finger upon flipping around to stare at him. “Now that that’s done. I think we should let the rest of the goons know who is in charge! Straight from the dead god’s mouth and we’ve got some changes to make. Let’s have a party, Butter style!”
The First Finger shakily rose to his feet, using his staff and gave her a deathly smile, his voice raspy. “Soon, we will return to the dust. There will be resistance to The Way of the Dust. Shall we prepare in advance for the known parties’ betrayal?”
“No! No!” Butter scoffed with light laughter, patting the shaking old toad on the bony shoulder and almost making him fall over. “I enjoy the challenge! In the words of good ol’ Seg’tharis, a dead ri’bot is a perfect ri’bot! Well, I’m paraphrasing but you get the point. Onward to the dance of death! Priss would tear up if she saw me,” she playfully sniffed, catching a small smile from Snow and Adoncia.
The white-haired woman wiped the lingering cold sweats from her brow, looking somewhat dehydrated and frail. “You…are something else, High Queen. How did you know Seg’tharis would put you in charge?”
“Know?” Butter blinked, her head tilting to the side. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything of the sort! I just thought it’d be fun to meet him and suspected he’d be pulling the strings with how much Death Energy was cycling the place.
“There’s no way they’d be able to get that kind of feeling inside this place than to have a death god on call or my bossy big sister sneakily sitting at the top of the tower. I half expected Priss to be here wearing that smug look, you know! It’d be like her to surprise me like that,” she huffed, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “She’s the definition of dramatic!”
“High Queen,” Adoncia groaned. “Only you can say that about the Empress…”
Butter’s eyes narrowed impishly as she nudged hips with the maid in passing to get her moving. “Oh, we’ll get you there, Blue Eyes.”
“Doubtful…”
“You’ll see… Coming, Snow White?” she asked, doing a twirl to walk backward. Her golden hair draped over her shoulders as she aimed a smile at the woman, who had her vision locked on the pile of ash. “You’re a smart cookie and can process stuff on the go! Snap, snap. We’re on the clock! We got an army to whip into shape for this next Crystal wave. You can take the first challenger. I’m so excited to see you in action!”
“Right, sorry,” she said with a forced laugh, jogging with some effort to keep up. “Wait, what? High Queen?”
“I have high expectations!” she sang in response as the Earth woman stumbled and almost fell before managing to gracefully catch herself.
“High Queen?!”
Descending the stairs with Adoncia by her side, the Fingers behind her, and the Fable bringing up the rear, Butter’s tone lowered slightly while feeling the white-haired lady’s spirit quickening with a resurgence—she figured expectations were the girl’s weakness. She couldn’t help but rise to meet any challenge.
“Maybe we’ll get you some glass shoes. Wouldn’t that be fun?” She paused, shifting her body to aim a thoughtful gleam up at the panting Fable. “Unless you already have them and are holding out on me? Mmm.”
A lump dropped down the girl’s throat under her bright-eyed stare before she broke eye contact and continued. “Your spirit has fought against an intense amount of pressure just now… It needs room to spread its wings to expand your Soul Area if you don’t want it to settle back to its former lul… No rest for the way of the strong, dearie. So follow me…”
Her smile softened while feeling Adoncia relaying her words to Mika and White, feeling their willpower skyrocket, Snow’s steps becoming firmer behind her. Her spirit keeping the focus, Butter set her heart on her next big meeting—Irida, the Head of the Cult of Life.
However, one thing played in the back of her mind.
Is that six-winged angel dead…or hurt and recovering? Now there is something to keep an eye out for. Someone that powerful doesn’t just die, which opens up…possibilities, she giggled to herself. I love a good mystery. Life goals!
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