Chapter 25
In which a ball is announced and Eva finds comfort.
Deep within the Imperial Tomb, Scarlet Von Halisha stood in a tiny room connected to the grand cathedral room in which Frintezza's organ stood. She stared hard at the great golden sword lying upon an altar made to please it, trying to make it disappear with her thoughts of hatred. The thing was alive, she realized in horror one day while trying to dispose of it. It was as alive as the Zariche, perhaps even more so with how it didn't seem to desire blood like the demonic sword did. It simply wanted destruction, even if the destruction came without it ever taken to arms. This mere fact disturbed Scarlet, for as a creature of selfish chaos, she couldn't fathom wanting destruction that you did not cause.
"Dissolve." She told it darkly; power flaring around her as she tried to will it away.
"No." the sword said simply in a voice that could not be heard by mortals. "I wait."
"You await nothing, you are merely a tool, and a tool's life is limited." Scarlet growled. If it could've had a human form, the sword might've shifted nonchalantly at this, with how its aura moved.
"No, am forever. The organic life is limited." The sword responded. Her temper ignited, for how dare a hunk of metal tell her that she, a demon thousands of years old, was mortal beneath it all? With a snarl she reached for the weapon, intent on destroying it with her dark power, when the sound of Frintezza clearing his throat caused her to jump away from it.
"Now now Scarlet, if you're that jealous of the sword I can spend a few days lavishing you with my love." Frintezza said smoothly in a voice bubbling with too much laughter to be taken seriously.
"I…I wasn't…" Scarlet faltered, trying to suppress her temper and find an excuse for her being in the room at the same time. She had been ordered to never enter the room without Frintezza's permission, and breaking any of his orders resulted in punishments that threatened even her sanity.
"Organic life believes it can destroy me." The sword tattled in a haughty tone. Scarlet hissed through her teeth and glared over her shoulder at it. Frintezza clucked his tongue in a condescending way and moved to stand in front of her with a graceful stride. He put a finger under Scarlet's chin to force her to look at him. Her eyes twitched slightly as she gazed into his eyes, and she cursed herself silently for being afraid that he'd strike her. She was so much more powerful than he, she asked herself many times what made her so afraid of him. Perhaps it was the insanity that had settled within him, or the knowledge that, if he died, so would she.
"Normally Scarlet, you know I would punish you for disobeying me." Frintezza said in a mock-gentle voice. She looked away from him angrily as he caressed her face in a loving manner. He grabbed her chin roughly and forced her to look at him again, earning a small noise of pain from her this time. He stared into her eyes intensely for several heartbeats, as if in prelude to hurting her. "However, I have more urgent matters I need you to take care of for me." He finally said, standing straight and patting her cheek lightly. He gracefully spun on heel and retraced his steps back into the grand cathedral with Scarlet following dutifully behind.
"What do you need of me now?" she asked in a sullen voice, watching his feet as he walked. Many methods of torture that were used in Gran Kain's realm just to the feet alone raced through her head, and she smirked as she imagined applying those to him. The smirk left her face in a hurry as he whipped around without warning, his rope-like hair almost hitting her as it swung around with his body. He giggled breathlessly, suddenly excited, and held his arms out as if welcoming her.
"Call your friends, your family, and your loved ones! Tell them to don their finest clothes, their most elegant jewels!" he said loudly, his voice echoing off of the ceiling high above them. Scarlet frowned as he began to hum and twirled lightly in dance with his arms still outstretched.
"You do not know of what you ask, the Lords of hell will not come just because you wish to look at them." Scarlet said bitterly as he began to waltz. In truth, the demons would laugh at her if she approached them for one of Frintezza's insane requests. She was a laughingstock of the demon world, having been foolishly trapped by a mortal. Frintezza stopped dancing in the center of the cathedral with her words and returned to her side with a smile.
"Oh, but they will want to come for this." Frintezza said with an arrogance that made Scarlet clench her teeth in anger. He wiped his hand across the air as if showcasing a sign. "After all, it's only once even in a demons immortal lifetime that they get to see the beginning of the end of the gods."
"The Seal of Gnosis has broken." The older Eva said to the younger within the goddess' mind. The younger Eva hummed merrily to herself and brushed the hair of a doll she had fashioned to look like Komugi. "Are you listening to me? The Seal of Gnosis is broken!" Eva shouted, pulling the doll from her younger self and flinging it away. The younger Eva stared after it with tears welling in her eyes before bursting out with a loud, childish wail. "Don't you even care?" she asked herself angrily.
"No, I don't!" the younger Eva shouted, standing up to stamp her feet in a tantrum. "That big ungrateful bully rejected me, he deserved what he got!" she folded her arms across her chest and pouted as the older Eva looked at her in shock. She put a hand to her chest as the younger Eva retrieved her doll and began to play with it again. Had she given Ballard his powers not out of her love for him but out of spite for his rejection of her?
"All will fall, one by one." The younger Eva sang, caressing her doll's hair. "Soon Shilen will return and I can go back to playing the music again." She looked up at her older personification with shining eyes. "Oh won't it be grand for time to return to what it was when Shilen returns? I'm so excited!" She giggled to herself and hugged her doll to her chest. "Just as I'm so excited that you found me a playmate! I can't wait until she dies…oh; can I help her along just a little? I'm so impatient!"
"Shilen's return won't make things go back to how they once were." The older Eva stated, looking down at her younger self with a frown. The younger Eva froze in the act of petting her doll, but did not look up. "Shilen will kill everyone who scorned her, you know that."
"She won't kill me, I didn't scorn her." The younger Eva said stubbornly, squeezing her doll between her hands. The older Eva knelt to stare at herself in the eye. She couldn't remember what fractured her mind to what it was now. Which one of them was the real Eva? She often wondered this, and could never find an answer. She was not scared of not being the real Eva, for if it were so, there would be nothing she could do except fade into the consciousness of the child before her. The younger Eva however, was terrified of not being the real one. To bring it up was the easiest method to regain control of the body they shared, as the younger would retreat in fear.
"The Seal of Gnosis is broken." Eva repeated slowly, watching her younger self's face. Eva's content expression faded with the other's words, and slowly a look of mournful grief overtook her. She began to cry in earnest, letting out deep heart wrenching sobs, and covered her face with her hands. For an instant both personifications were one person, and alone within herself.
"I loved him so much." This new Eva sobbed, the grief over Ballard's death finally hitting her. "Why didn't he let me love him? I could've spared him from this…I could've kept him by my side forever… Hey…tell me…" she turned to look at the older self she still felt was standing there, but found that she was alone.
Of course she was alone…she realized. That's why she created the big sister version of herself within her mind. She was all alone, abandoned by everyone because she abandoned her post when Einhasad forced her to be a goddess…abandoned by everyone whom once worshipped Shilen when she accepted her post. No one was happy with her music anymore, the one thing that used to calm souls everywhere. No one would answer the questions she had saying she was a goddess now and should know it all.
"The answers to your questions will come in time, just be patient with yourself." The memory of Ballard told her with a smile. He'd found her crying in the Field of Whispers, where she'd flown after a party of mortals had interrupted her vacation in her Garden to try and kill her cat butler. That was the moment she'd fallen for him, the only being to ever give her words of encouragement and comfort and a smile of pride.
She'd revealed her true self then, her fractured mind made whole by him, and pursued him to be her lover. He'd given her a kiss, a shy kiss that children give one another when they like the other, but regretfully declined her affections. He'd long since received the Seal of Gnosis from the previous seal keeper, and told her that responding to her affection would compromise his duty of protecting it. He also gently admitted to being in love with another, the woman he eventually married.
At first Eva had been scorned, and in her scorn her mind fractured again. The younger self began to throw a tantrum, causing much turmoil upon the sea for seven days and nights, the tide rising and covering much of the Field of Silence. On the seventh night she appeared to him again as he waded across the Field of Silence en route to Giran, and angrily insisted that he become her lover. Again he gently rejected her, and thanked her for the honor of her attraction. The older self took control as Ballard flinched under the fury of the younger, and Eva was finally able to accept his decision. The waters receded, and as a parting gift she bestowed him with the foresight thinking it would keep him safe as the guardian of the Seal. She never knew she'd been playing into Shilen's game all along, but once she realized it, it was much too late to retract the gift.
"I don't want to be alone." She cried now, and broke down into a fresh set of tears. She felt the presence of the older personality return, and embrace her lovingly. Content now, she let herself be rocked and shushed, and cried until her grief was sated. It was not her fault that Ballard was dead she knew, but she couldn't help but feeling as if it was.
"I suppose my future servant wasn't the best person to try to confide in about my grief." The older Eva murmured, staring off into space. She had tried to make small talk with Komugi, to find a chance to open up to someone who might know the grief she held. It had backfired, Komugi's unwillingness to talk apparent with her retorts. It made the younger self sadder that Komugi hated her, even though she meant no harm. Eva was possibly the most peaceful, the most loving of mortals out of all of the gods. It was hard to gauge, the older self knew, when she acted so willingly to hurt others on her mother's behalf. She just wanted her mother to comfort her in the end…was that so wrong?
In reality, the older Eva, being the dominant personality lifted her head at the sound of sobbing. She had returned to the Elven Forest to watch as Ballard's ashes were scattered upon Iris Lake, the lake created from her tears. She turned where she sat to glance over her shoulder, pushing her hair from her face as she glanced behind her. A young elf boy no more than three or four with silvery blonde hair stood behind her, tears streaking his face as he watched her. Her lips parted slightly and she tilted her head as it occurred to her that he was the spitting image of Ballard, only in younger form.
"Why everyone cry?" he asked in his fractured child speak. Eva glanced around herself curiously, wondering if he was really speaking to her or himself, as she was certain she'd made herself invisible to mortal eyes. "Dun want crying no more." He sniffled, lowering his head to scrub at his eyes.
"You can see me?" Eva asked in a hushed voice, ducking her head down slightly as if afraid someone would hear her. Her mind was repairing itself despite her best efforts to keep it split into two, and her heart began to pound as his eyes, deep emerald green like the Mother Tree's leaves had once been, looked into hers as he nodded. A tiny smile graced the edges of her mouth as she memorized the details of his face, overjoyed beyond belief to see this tiny version of Ballard in front of her.
"Are you a fairy?" the boy asked, staring back into her eyes. A tiny bit of fear was hidden there, and Eva chuckled at it.
"I'm the Queen of the fairies." Eva said in a proud voice, knowing that his mind was too young to comprehend her true self. She sat up straight and dignified as his mouth dropped open in awe. "Come here little one, I shall make the crying go away." Eva said tenderly, holding her arms out to him. The boy hesitated, the pull of being close to his goddess urging him to fall into her arms while the logic of staying away from strangers that his parents scolded into him warring with one another. The pull won, and he fell onto her, and wrapped his little arms around her neck to cry some more. Eva rocked him as the older self had rocked the younger in her mind, and petted his hair gently. "What is your name?" she whispered as she comforted him.
"Waverly." The boy answered with a hiccup. "If you're fairly queen, can you make grampa come back?" he asked with a tiny sob. "Mommy still crying cuz he went to sleep." A pang of sadness hit Eva and she swallowed the urge to return to tears. So he was of Ballard's family, no wonder he resembled him.
"I wish I could." She murmured, hugging him. Waverly clung to Eva for a few moments longer, then pushed away to sniffle and wipe his face again.
"Can you make trees go 'way then?" he asked, an almost laughable dark look upon his face. He couldn't pull off a look of hatred, even though he was obviously serious about his request. Eva laughed out loud, her laughter ringing off of the waves of the lake, and bringing unexplainable, immediate joy to those gathered along the banks for Ballard's funeral.
"That I cannot do either." She said, patting his cheek. Waverly frowned at her and stuck his lower lip out. "I'll tell you what, if you remember when you're able to travel the forest alone, at the start of every season come out here to the lake, and I'll visit with you and tell you tales of the world." Waverly's face brightened with this, as he loved hearing stories, especially ones without trees in them. He nodded vigorously in agreement, and plopped down in front of Eva, thinking she meant to tell him a story now.
"Waverly!" Cesa called, approaching him. Dutifully, Waverly pushed himself back to his feet and toddled back to his mother as fast as his short legs could carry him. He didn't look behind and say goodbye to Eva, as such was the way of children. Eva watched with a wistful smile as Cesa picked her boy up and walked back to the Gazebo overlooking the lake with him. Without a word of farewell from her even, a waterspout erupted around her, taking her back to her realm.
Meanwhile, far north of the Elven Forest, within the Devastated Castle, Vlad walked quickly through the hallways. He'd pause at doors and open them to peek inside, sometimes wincing and covering his face with what he'd see, and then move on. He entered the throne room at a brisk walk; Ryonai crouched over a map of Aden Territory, making battle strategy with the leaders of the two sets of warriors that had just arrived.
"It's about time you got here." Ryonai stated in irritation, moving a set of stones representing one force across the map to plan out their line of battle. Vlad scanned the dimly lit throne room with a frown, ignoring his leader's bitter comment.
"Have you seen Amari?" he asked. Ryonai lifted his head slowly, an unexplainable feeling of dread settling into his chest.
"I caught sight of him slipping out of the castle during the confusion earlier." Alucard spoke up from where he sat on the floor, repairing his armor.
"Uh oh." Vlad said, as Ryonai's face slowly melted into a look of horrified anger. Abandoning his friends and clan was not like Amari, but Vlad too couldn't help but feel that he'd left for reasons not beneficial to the victory of Aden during this battle. "I'm on it, I'll find him." Vlad said, raising his hands as Ryonai opened his mouth. He turned on heel and quickly walked from the throne room as the other troop leaders began to bombard him with questions. "I would hope you have a good reason for this, dear brother of mine..." Vlad said bitterly as he began to fasten together the armor he'd thrown on clumsily. "…A damn good reason."
