-One Thousand and Three Years Ago-
Elodie bit her lip as she slid through the broken iron gates. She was lucky she had insisted on carrying out this mission now—were it two or three months later, her belly would've been too large to slip through the bars that led into her old home.
The palace was dark and dismal. Even though it was not yet autumn, there was a sharp chill in the air. Broken glass littered the pathways: all the lanterns had been broken, to prevent any sort of light from reaching the inside of the castle rooms. Elodie despaired somewhat to see the changes that came over the place she'd grown up in… she was used to viewing the courtyard as a garden, with plenty of flowers and trees and a fountain in the midst of it all.
The fountain was dry; the trees were dead; the flowers were gone.
She knew she couldn't dwell on the castle's condition for long. The longer she remained in the Hallowed City, the more likely it was that her mother would detect her presence.
"Go quickly," Arthur had said earnestly, looking as frightened as she had felt. "Sneak in and as soon as you find anything, come back out. Come back to Petal Meadows as soon as possible. Send word ahead that you're fine. Please."
Elodie hadn't yet told Arthur that she was pregnant again. He would've only gone ballistic and forbidden her from going entirely, and then they would have no idea what the demon was planning.
When the entire world was at stake… sacrifices may have to be made.
She exhaled slowly, grateful that her belly wasn't noticeably larger and that her feet weren't getting sore yet. The only sign of her condition was the small but firm bump above her hipbones… Elodie well remembered being pregnant with Rosalina four years ago. It had been difficult—she hoped that this second child might not be as debilitating…
"Focus," she whispered to herself. This was hardly the time to be thinking of her future child, in the midst of perhaps the most dangerous place in the world.
Elodie forced herself forward, edging towards what was once the servants' entrance. There was a hidden door leading into a labyrinth behind the walls—she had been well-acquainted with the concealed tunnels when she was a child, but her memory had never been the strongest…
She edged around the walls, remembering at the least that the door had been by the hyacinth flowers. Her fingers brushed the dirty cobblestone; more than once she lurched away from the sharp stone so she wouldn't cut herself.
But at last, she found it—a tiny hole that her pinkie almost got stuck in, leading to the door's handle.
Elodie was able to open the door with a grunt and a lot of her strength: she couldn't help thinking that Matthias or Arthur would've made short work of this door, but she was a sorceress, not a warrior…
When she stepped inside, she was greeted by cobwebs and dust. Elodie inhaled sharply as a large spider crawled across the wall just in front of her—but she didn't scream. The tunnels could echo horribly if one was too loud.
The next half-hour was spent with Elodie carefully tiptoeing through the servants' passageways. During her trek she was wondering where the servants were… she didn't remember these hallways being so empty when she was a child…
She hoped they were all right.
Every now and then, Elodie would take a quick peek outside one of the connecting doors to gather her bearings. Each time she did this she was met with more desolation: the ballroom's rugs were torn and moldy, the kitchens were all abandoned. There was no sign of life anywhere—had Elodie not been certain that her mother was still living in the castle, she would've thought it completely abandoned…
Something inside her lurched. At first, Elodie thought it was simply her stomach turning with unease.
Only after another moment did she realize it was her baby.
Elodie stopped and rested against the wall, placing a hand on her stomach. Her eyes rose to the ceiling, and all at once the fear hit her once more: the fear that she would be discovered and die in this place, without Arthur, leaving Rosalina motherless and her husband a widow.
"No," she whispered to herself, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. "No, no, you can do this. You have to."
Trying to use the adrenaline she was given, she propelled herself down the next few hallways.
The next door that she opened led into the lounge—Elodie remembered sitting by the fireplace here with her father. He had been the one to teach her to read; her favorite book had been one about a young woman who disguised herself as a man to go to war, because she loved her country more than anything…
"You can be anything you want to be," her father had told her. "A princess, a warrior—or both."
Filled with a burst of warmth from the memory, Elodie closed the door again and set off once more. She knew that her mother's alchemy study had been nearby, which meant she was likely near where she needed to be…
And then she was there: the door ahead of her led into her mother's study.
Elodie took a silent breath and carefully clasped her hands together. She closed her eyes and whispered a quick incantation before pressing her palms on the door.
Her hands remained cold… which meant there was no one inside.
But there was still the possibility that her mother might appear while she was inside—Elodie peeled her hands away from the door and cracked it open.
The study held the only sign of life throughout the entire castle. The room was larger than Elodie remembered. Tables all across the walls were covered in potions' ingredients: some common, some she'd never heard of or seen before. Distilleries bubbled upon some of the tables, filled with liquids of all colors. On the far side of the room sat a desk fit for a queen, upon which parchments were scattered with no rhyme or reason. Atop a pedestal on her desk was a beautiful silver star, the only light source in the room save for the candles that emitted a blood-red fire.
Knowing that this was her chance, Elodie skittered out of the hallway and into the study. She rushed to the door on the far side of the room and cast the same spell one more time—there was no one in the hallway.
"Be still upon the ground, and warn me if danger comes to pass," she whispered, pointing her finger towards the ground.
A circle of white light shone briefly in front of the doorway and was gone. At least now, if the demon returned while Elodie was inside, she would have a few seconds' warning.
As Elodie continued forth towards the desk, there was an itching in the back of her mind. She tried to ignore it, knowing it was possible that it was some sort of detection spell of her mother's.
On one thing she was certain—she had to be quick.
Elodie rifled through the papers. Many of them were in a demonic language she could not read, but some were still in the common tongue. She looked through them… most were written reports on experiments her mother had enacted on demons, on certain alchemy formulas, on…
"In the name of the hells," whispered Elodie. Her hand shook as she softly read aloud to herself, "'The servants have outlived their usefulness. Here follows the resilience of the normal human to spells I learned from Malik and Norgathal…'"
Even though she knew she didn't want to read through the list, she was too horrifically fascinated to put down the paper.
She recognized those names: Joseph, Leila, Vincent, Yolanda… even her private tutor, Dimitri…
Elodie set down the list with a trembling hand. She had long known that her mother's humanity had evaporated—but now she knew just how far gone Lysandra Lancaster was, the types of evils she had committed…
But Elodie also knew that she couldn't be lost with terror or grief.
There was still a job to do.
She sat the list back down upon the desk, being very careful to leave it exactly where it had been found. Elodie committed all of the names upon the parchment to memory, determined to dedicate a service to them when she returned home…
Elodie continued searching. She found other things of similar ilk—dark deals made with demons, betrayals and blackmail, new formulas for poisons…
Laying underneath a map of the world was her father's old journal.
She bit her lip. Tobias Lancaster would write in this book every evening, a familiar smile hiding behind his thick beard. And whenever Elodie would ask about it, he would say, "One day, cupcake. One day you may read through all of my entries, and know about all of the adventures I leave for you."
Without quite meaning to, she opened the journal. Elodie flipped to the last entry, wishing to see if there was some sort of farewell that she hadn't been able to get when he'd passed—
My darling Lysandra, I know you will hurt when I am gone. But I ask you, for your own sake, to remember that in love you will find strength—and the same goes for you, Elodie.
Take care of each other. My two girls; you are strong and kind and beautiful. You may yet survive anything if you only remember what you're holding on to.
I love you both more than words can express. One day, I will see you again.
The entry was short, and written in a shaky hand. Perhaps it had been written mere moments before his passing—or perhaps it had been written long before, and Tobias Lancaster had lost the strength to write more days or weeks prior.
Either way, Elodie was stricken by the message. Hot tears filled her eyes and began to spill over her cheeks. Standing in this dank study of the monster her mother had become, she could not help feeling as though they'd failed him: they both had.
She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her black dress, an empty void filling the place where her heart was supposed to be—
There was another nudge from inside her.
Elodie looked down to her stomach. If she looked hard enough, she could see that she was pregnant. But her attention was less on the small bump and more-so on the fact that the baby had chosen that moment to reach out to her.
She looked back to the book in her hands.
"Yes, I see," she mused, perfectly aware that this was as good as talking to herself. "If you are a boy—your name will be Tobias. I owe it to my father, to try once more to be the woman he wished me to be."
There was no nudge, no sign to let her know that this was what the baby had wanted—if it had wanted anything at all—but Elodie felt a calm in her heart that she had not had before, and that was good enough for her.
Knowing that her time was running out, she replaced the journal in its meticulous place. One of the last scrolls lay next to it: Elodie picked it up and gently unfurled it.
Drawn in the center of the scroll was a diagram of a star, much like the one that sat upon the pedestal ahead of her. The label at the top read: 'The Diamond Star.'
Elodie frowned somewhat and looked through the rest of the notes. There were further diagrams: colored pictures of other star-shaped jewels named after gemstones. She could not understand everything that was written on the parchment, but she knew enough to be sure that these Crystal Stars were supposed to be very powerful…
When she reached the bottom of the page, her eyes widened.
"The Crystal Stars are my final chance to bring back Tobias. If it is not possible, then it is true that no soul can be ferried back from death; and it will be time to destroy the world as it is so I may rebuild it as one that coexists with the land of the dead."
"No…"
The word escaped Elodie's lips without it really meaning to. But this was what she had come for—any inclination of what the demon was preparing, why the shadows around the Hallowed City were growing darker—
A flash of white light illuminated the room.
It was Elodie's glyph of warding. She only had fifteen seconds and then her mother would find her—she looked at the Crystal Star upon its pedestal.
She could take it to slow the demon's progress…but that would give away that someone was in the study—and there were very few people who knew of the location of this study, not to mention that the only other exit from the room, save from the front door, was the servant's hallways…
Arthur's face entered Elodie's mind—the expression that would be on it should she never return to him.
Elodie unconsciously placed a hand on her stomach.
It wasn't just her life she was risking.
She threw the scroll back onto the table, forgoing the effort of putting it back exactly, and sprinted towards the servant's hallways empty-handed.
The door had no sooner closed behind her than Elodie heard the front door of the study open—a chill permeated the air so completely that there was no doubt in the woman's mind who it was.
As swiftly and as softly as she could, Elodie navigated the hidden hallways of the castle. There was no roar of anger, no magic in the air… nothing to signify that her presence had been discovered…
But all throughout her journey, doubt nagged at Elodie's mind.
Should she have taken the Crystal Star? Did she make the right choice? Surely there would be consequences of this action later…
Elodie made it back to the courtyard without incident. She shoved open the door and crept into what was once the garden, getting closer to the iron gates—
A wall of shadow erupted around her. Elodie shrieked, knowing she had been found out, and sprinted towards the gates.
The darkness closed in, slowly suffocating her, trying to prevent her from escaping the castle's perimeters—
With a newfound burst of speed, Elodie budged through the gates, leaving behind the swirling tendrils of darkness, some of which were trying to budge through the gates even as she barreled towards the town.
A scream followed her as she ran; a sound that shattered the peace of the night; a sound that could be heard across the entire world.