XXI

Elina had been bedridden since her encounter with Naveen. No matter what salves were concocted or tinctures were mixed, the black webbing continued to spider along her collarbone until her vibrant brown hue had withered to the sickly grey of peeling snakeskin.

“It keeps getting worse,” Vidya grunted as she slammed shut yet another medical journal and tossed it to the ground. “I went through all her journals. Everything. There has to be something else!”

“Mama.” Maithra arrived behind her to put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Some people have arrived. They say there are places that specialise in treating those sick by chaotic magic. They can take Elina there, if we allow them.”

Vidya swallowed the impulse to reject, knowing it was selfish to keep Elina close at hand where she could feel with animal certainty her presence and make sure that she was alive. The thought of her having crossed the border into another territory where she might breathe her last—

“Send them up…” Elina moaned weakly, eyes fluttering open and shut. Her breaths were hollowed-out reverberations in a darkened cave.

“All right,” Vidya relented, and blinked back tears as she did so. “I’ll tell them.”

Elina smiled in thanks, but it was an ephemeral flicker. She looked near death, the rise and ebb of her chest a faded motion beneath the sheets.

Is this what loving you has brought me to, Sadik?

It felt silly of her to think of him now. Much less to long for him to come to her. Being on one’s deathbed tended to drive a heart to foolish sentiment. For all she knew, he was imprisoned or, worse yet, dead himself. Perhaps he’d be there in the netherworld waiting to welcome her into his arms.

She watched her mother leave down the stairs and suppressed a weak cough. She couldn’t die in this bed. Not while Yasmin still needed her. All she needed was a little more time.

Footsteps sounded into her room and she discovered that they belonged to an Odakan witch. She was small and pale with lustrous dark hair neatly tamed into a strict, unyielding bun. When she saw Elina, she smiled in a way that sapped the air of its warmth.

“You must be Elina Panja?” she said. Her uniform was a starch white with no logo. “I hope it is all right for me to sit?”

Elina glanced her over, wary, before nodding towards her favourite armchair. “I can see you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“My name is Dr Akira Isuka. I represent a small organisation known as the Mountain that investigates complex cases of chaotic magic usage.” Dr Isuka put down her teacup on her saucer and folded her hands together. “With your permission, we would like to take you into custody to study your condition and hopefully treat it.”

“Will I… will I be all right?”

“I am afraid it is difficult to say for certain.” Dr Isuka frowned. “Having had experience with chaotic magic when it gets into the veins of a mortal, well… I suppose you could say it works like a virus slowly eating away at the cells. It bonds to its host, always shifting and camouflaging itself until it is too late to stop it.”

Elina’s hands trembled. “So I… I’m doomed?”

Dr Isuka regarded her wide brown eyes and the deep concern in them. She couldn’t look at her for too long before it reminded her of another pair. “I can’t promise you a miracle, but I can say you are far from doomed. Come with us, and we can sustain your life until a cure can be crafted.” Dr Isuka’s lips flexed with sympathy. “I lost someone I held dear to chaos magic a long time ago. Since then, I have dedicated my life to ensuring others are spared the same fate. I’ll give you a little time to think about it before I contact you again. Here is my mirror frequency.” She produced a card between her fingers and set it down on the table. “I’m afraid I must depart now.”

“Of course.” Elina picked up the card and held it like a lifeline. “Thank you… so much, Dr Isuka.”

Dr Isuka nodded at her briefly before turning to leave.

The Mielette Spa was a private wellness retreat tucked inside the blue-grey mountains of highland Soleterea. Patients of grievous magic-related injury or illness would be treated to a strict regime of rest and respite, their every need catered to by solarites. Much went into crafting this rejuvenating stay, from the catering of gourmet meals to the deluxe array of facilities. But the most important treatment of all was by far the solarites’ best kept secret—their very own ichor.

For centuries the celestials had been synthesising their blood to craft a hidden elixir of youth that (should the individual not already be too far gone) was capable of restoring a patient to perfect health. Such a cure had understandably been kept concealed from the masses, both to protect the solarites and to prevent acts of foolish hubris on the part of humans.

Here Lyra de Lis slowly healed after her catastrophic battle with the huntress left her clinging to the knife’s edge of survival. Her injuries had been numerous—consisting mainly of swollen, jagged lumps of fragmented bone where the huntress had nearly pummelled her senseless.

The fight had been a test of humility for Lyra, if nothing else. Never before had she been rendered to such childlike feebleness. If not for her sheer indomitable will to survive, it was doubtful Lyra would have lived to tell the tale.

The solarites had wasted little time applying their elixir to her through an intravenous drip. Thus, Lyra awoke to discover her bones smoothed straight as though ironed—not a single fissure remaining. She glanced with interest at the gold-flecked fluid entering her bloodstream via the drip.

“Well, I certainly don’t know what you are, but we ought to have you bottled,” she weakly quipped to the elixir, glancing about at her surroundings. What she found instead at her bedside was a table with a drawer, and on the drawer a note that read: Open me.

Lyra’s brow furrowed in interest at this, and she found a blue velvet box inside. She opened the box next to reveal a solid gold rose with a diamond stud in the centre. The sight of it took her aback, and she glanced around the ward again for any sign of the person who put it there.

Lyra picked up the rose, studying it. The first thing she noticed was that the petals were all perfect. She ran her fingers along the length of one, its smooth, cool surface, and something wound tight in her, like the crank of a music box slowly playing inside her memory. The rose garden at Rosâtre with the pavilion in the centre and its delicately curling white iron. How Laila used to run for hours, gathering and kicking up petals until her skin became a patchwork of them.

The ones Lyra remembered best were the pure gold roses that skirted around the pavilion with their opulent lustre, commanding sight but refusing touch (they were much like stars that way). That same bloom had adorned Soleterea’s national flag for generations, symbolic of the beauty and prosperity of their rule.

Lyra observed the figurine in her hand with its bejewelled centre, taunting her intrepid curiosity until eventually she relented. She vacated her bed and padded down the ward on quicksilver footsteps until she found a bathroom. Locking herself in one of the cubicles, she sat down on the toilet lid and twisted the bud.

The jewel ignited with a thin ray of light beaming so suddenly into existence that Lyra was unprepared. It burrowed right through her eyes and into her cerebral tissue, nearly causing her to drop it. She realised the transmission was hypnotic when her eyes grew heavy and slow with tiredness. It was a common method used by solarites to coax others into the Astral Realm during meetings they wanted to keep clandestine.

Now Lyra was even more curious, and her desire to uncover the truth overruled whatever hesitation she might hold towards the owner of such trickery. So she made herself comfortable once more and let her spirit drift away with the soft oscillations of shallow consciousness.

She awoke in a villa made of marble. The windows were arched cavities in the walls with no glass or lattice, streaming with undiluted sunlight. There was no angle Lyra could walk to escape or weaken it, no shadow to seek refuge behind. She could only walk forward through the passage until she reached a large fresco wall coated in gilt, glistening with the smoothness of honey.

She followed the iridescent animations as they unfurled. First, the star that shuttled down from the sky and burst in a swirl of splintering cinders. Then, the roses that yawned and stretched from the rolling hills of apple-green. Then, the silver shears that severed the green umbilical cord of the bush. And finally, the rose that ascended untethered and became the sun.

Lyra found the sun-rose by stairs made of marble veined with gold. They wound up for miles like the body of a vine, taking her past multiple floors each quaking with their own beckons of laughter and conversation.

She felt a magnetic drag towards each of the doors, with their ornately carved knobs in gold or crystal. Some even wafted scents of sweet wine and honey. But she knew she must ascend to the final tier, to the doors of carved alabaster awaiting her.

The doors withdrew with a gasp the moment she touched them, and a gush of light consumed her.

When Lyra blinked again she was seated at a large round silver disc of a table, polished like a mirror. Her feet settled on the pliant moisture of a cloud. Above her, leering with a lustful intensity, was a sun so unlike the golden orb of her own world that sprinkled magnanimously the coins of its wealth upon every tree, flower, and bush.

This sun was a vulgar red, pulsing like the heart of a giant. It erased all it surrounded, sucking all stars and space and then expanding three sizes too large.

Lyra regarded it with revulsion and fascination in equal measure, the foul hunger of it, throbbing and rubescent.

“Welcome, Ser Lyra,” came a voice, several voices, united as one and yet fragmented as wishes spoken into a well.

Lyra’s head darted every which way to the vague figures seated around her, outlined only by floating stars.

“Is this magician’s farce truly necessary?” she asked, her voice thin and bladed with irritation.

“We act the same to all in the first meeting,” the choral voice replied. “When you prove yourself worthy, we will reveal ourselves.”

“And who are you?”

A large, fat petal sailed in front of her face, followed by another, and she could see that the sun before them had opened into the corolla of a rose.

“We are the Order of the Golden Rose.”

The sun-rose transformed into the aureate hue she knew and loved.

“And what do you seek from me?”

A petal landed on the table’s reflective glass and melted with a shuddering ripple into the face of the first impératrice.

“Our order was established by Impératrice Esterre Rose, the First Who Fell, who decreed that we be the ones to protect Vysteria, improve Vysteria, and eliminate all who pose a threat to its existence.”

Lyra observed the visage of the famed solarite, matching her features to Laila’s. She was all fawn and rose with hair whiter than starlight, and her eyes were a pale lilac. She’d not been seen since her abdication from the throne led to the power vacuum that kickstarted centuries of dynastic infighting. Legend had it she’d retreated into the Astral Realm for good to guard the source of all magic—the Holy Phoenix.

“What has this to do with me?”

The table shuddered, and Esterre was replaced with the arctic landscape of Mortos.

“There is a blight,” they said, and the image of an occasso was rendered. “A great and ancient terror that threatens to destabilise all we mean to protect. We are seeking all possible candidates to aid us in eliminating it.”

Lyra was startled by the knowledge that there were others working behind the scenes regarding Mortos.

“You were chosen for your moral fortitude and martial strength. Both things we will need. Before we would have thought to recruit your uncle, but sadly he has passed.”

Lyra swallowed at this. “What sort of threat are we discussing?”

“The occassi are but mere footsoldiers. Their creator is a deposed god who wishes to rule through them and drag us into an age of blood and chaos. Only when the occassi scourge is sterilised will we be safe.”

“Sterilised?” Lyra grimaced as though the word were something sour. They spoke of it as though it was something innocuous, something mild.

“We intend to cleanse the world of chaos magic and all its pernicious effects. That means extracting it from all creatures whom it has affected. In particular, Calante’s direct bloodline.”

An image formed of the Calantis family.

“So that’s why you desired Dominus,” Lyra said.

“The occasso has provided us much needed insight on how to purge chaos. But much work still requires doing. You allowed him once to slip from your grasp—”

Lyra laughed at this. “Yes, do forgive me for being beaten within an inch of my life.”

“—but this can be rectified. Provided you are willing.”

There was nothing Lyra would like to see more than the end of chaos. Though she knew well Laila might have conflicting views on that matter. Should she accept this mission, it might well mean the ruin of their friendship. Could she sacrifice a bond she once considered so essential?

“What must I do?”

An image fluctuated across the table and formed Dominus’s face.

“Find Dominus. Detain him. And deliver him to us alive. You will be contacted by an agent when you awaken. Do not fail.”

Lyra stammered to ask more questions, but her words were stifled by another deluge of light.

She awoke with a startled spasm, her muscles clenched as though she had been falling and was braced for a very harsh landing. With a quick glance around her, she found herself within the toilet cubicle. She looked down at the rose in her palm and clenched it. Her mission was clear: She must find Dominus.

Wind rustled along Dr Isuka’s woollen coat as she approached her airship. A gleam of evening sun oscillated across the aluminium husk of the Hariken, ramp descended to make way for the levitating aerochair lifting Elina Panja onto the flight.

Once she had boarded, the scholar ensured her patient was made comfortable with offerings of green tea and cherry blossom rice cakes as they took to the skies towards Odaka.

“The flight shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most, which gives us plenty of time to become acquainted,” Dr. Isuka said, taking a sip of her tea. “So, do tell me, what questions do you have?”

“I don’t even know where to begin…” Elina snuffled. “How did this all start?”

“The Mountain was established twenty years ago by a solarite benefactor. A reaction to the discovery of Mortos.” Dr Isuka munched on a rice cake. “When we first encountered the country, we became aware of just how little we knew about chaos: its power, its weaknesses, how to counter and safeguard against it. Thus, a small group of scholars came together to form our organisation, and we’ve been working steadily ever since.”

“And… who is this benefactor?”

“She prefers anonymity,” Dr Isuka said, “but sometimes she visits, so you may see her.”

Elina didn’t think she’d ever seen a solarite in the flesh before, and the thought electrified her. “This facility… I hope I should be perfectly safe there?”

“Of course!” Dr Isuka said. “We have no ill intentions towards you whatsoever, I can assure you of that. You are a mere unfortunate victim of circumstance. We all know how reckless men can be. Hence we step in.”

Elina nodded, glancing out of the window to watch the landscape transform to the altitudinous region of Odaka, hoary with mist. Growing out from the craggy mountain slopes were the spires of a city joined by swaying rope bridges, the glistening silver thread of a river seeping between.

“That’s our capital,” Dr Isuka told her as they flew by. “I will have to show you around for a visit one day. Once you’re well again. Our destination, however, is a little further north.”

“All the way into the mountains?” Elina asked, seeing nothing but slate-blue ranges beyond the city boundaries.

“Our work requires that we have a little more privacy than would be afforded when operating within city limits,” Dr Isuka explained as they approached one particular mountain with a gushing waterfall.

Elina was astonished when it split apart to allow them entrance.

The airship flew inside the cave mouth and landed in its impenetrable blackness. As the engine quieted, the area was flooded with fluorescent lights igniting along the walls of the caves.

“Come along, mata.” Dr Isuka ushered Elina out of the ship and into the cave, smiling at her wary disbelief. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Elina followed her into the hollow of the cave towards two large metal doors, which opened into a chamber. Dr Isuka stepped inside and placed her open palm against a glowing hand imprint and, just like that, the chamber began to move.

A lift, Elina realised as the doors sealed shut.

They descended into the bowels of the cave, receiving only darkness, but soon the chasm opened once more into a laboratory of several floors all enclosed within a circular structure.

Elina could scarcely believe her eyes when she looked upon it, for never before had she seen a facility so grand dedicated for the sole purposes of learning. Polished oak bookcases inlaid with porcelain plaques soared even taller than sycamores. False windows of verre églomisé nearly tricked the mind with idyllic woodland sceneries. Though the surfaces were so polished Elina could see how unwell she had grown in them.

“I can see you’ve found this place to be to your liking.” Dr Isuka smiled as she gestured at her labs. “Welcome to the Mountain.”

They passed various floors of the facility where the scholars did their work. Most of them were Odakans, though there were some Thals and Serajis among them too.

At the end of it, Isuka took her to the patient ward, where she was settled in a bed of sturdy mahogany with silk so plush Elina felt she’d been floated away on a cloud.

“We’ll just need to take a sample of your blood for examination and then we can begin treatment,” Dr Isuka said. She snapped her fingers and gestured for the orderlies to get started.

“Thank you again for all you’re doing, Dr Isuka,” Elina replied. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Of course. Remember the person I told you I’d lost to chaos magic? Well, she died long before I was able to save her. Long before I knew I could do anything about it. It’s been twenty years now, and still I…” She trailed off with a hitch in her chest. “I would do anything if it meant I could spare her such an awful fate. Which is why I feel an obligation to you, mata. I won’t say this work will be easy and light, but it will save you.”

“I put my life in your hands.”

Dr Isuka smiled one last time before she left the ward and travelled even further down into the subterranean floors where she performed most of her experiments.

She placed her hand into another imprint, and the door opened into a room flanked with observation cells on either side. The Bestiary.

Rows upon rows of cells housed creatures of all variations. Some she knew of beforehand, others were entirely alien. But where her knowledge failed, the labels were more than happy to inform. Subject: Griffin. Subject: Mermaid. Subject: Siren.

On and on Isuka walked as the sleepy eyes of her captives stalked her. Most were barely mobile and only had the energy to cling helplessly to her with their gaze before their vigour was once more snuffed. Subject: Firedrake. Subject: Arassas. Subject: Hippogriff. Subject: Unknown Mutation—

Her steps halted as she looked inside the cell. A strange reptilian creature with retracted bat wings was crumpled in a heap of limbs. Capturing one of Darius’s chimeras was an unexpected prize, one that would be most useful.

She continued on, seeing names labelled on cells she’d been studying recently. All from Mortos. Lupari. Qarnun. Melltith. Bilken. The subjects looked dazed. In order to study the effects of chaos magic, she knew she needed to see how it functioned in those who were born with it. Should she be successful extracting chaos from them, it shouldn’t be too far-fetched to remove it from mortals. And finally, after so long, she would have freed everyone from this evil.

Dr Isuka exhaled, glancing at the cells. “Let’s get started, then.”