Little one.
Krushni smiled even as she turned her head.
The portal opened by Vessa as he came through from unknown realms shimmered like a heat mirage in a roughly circular shape. Beyond him, she glimpsed a desolate volcanic landscape, blighted by ruptured ground and bright with flowing rivers of lava. Then, at a word spoken in Ashcrit by the seer-mage, the portal winked shut.
There he stood, as tall, dark, and fierce-looking as his persona in the portals and unspace. Vessa. Finally in the flesh.
“Welcome,” he said aloud, joining his palms together in a namas of greeting.
Around him, King Gwann, his queen, his priests, and other people all gaped and murmured in amazement. Those felled by the stonefire still lay scattered around, their bodies reduced to ashes that stirred uneasily in a soft wind.
“Well met, sage,” Krushni said, moving toward Vessa. “It worked, then.”
He inclined his head silently. “I regret the loss of your mother,” he said. “Nothing I do can ever make up for that loss. But you made the right choice. By assuming a new avatar, you remove yourself permanently from Jarsun’s game. Now your life is your own to do with as you desire.”
He turned his head to greet the young man beside her. “Welcome, Drishya. It is an honor to meet the Slayer of Tyrak.”
Drishya said nothing. But he lowered his head to acknowledge the sage’s greeting.
Krushni said to Vessa, “I only desire one thing from this life, and one thing alone.”
Vessa looked at her. Drishya looked at her too. King Gwann, the queen, everyone looked at her.
She smiled, feeling the power within her. She was stronger. Much, much stronger. And she would grow stronger yet. And with Drishya beside her, she would be unstoppable. She would accomplish in this life what she could not in her last. The only thing that mattered to her anymore.
“To kill Jarsun Krushan,” she said.
And thousands of miles distant, in the Burnt Empire, in the capital city of Hastinaga, in the great throne hall, the dark, malevolent force uncoiled and awoke, its black sentience responding to the rage, power, and determination in her, and the Burning Throne spoke in a voice of flame:
Hail the Dark Queen risen.
And with a burst of fury that shocked the dozen-odd hapless sentries and servants within the vast chamber, stonefire ignited, impossibly long tentacles of hot rage lashing out to incinerate every last one of them to piles of ashes and blackened bone.
Burn, it said in gleeful adoration.
Yes, Krushni replied. Burn.