Chiyo's face felt pinched and flat, as if pressed up against a window, and her eyes and nose were crusty, as if she awoke from a long sickness. When she feebly raised her hand to her face, crud came away, caked to her palm. Through her bleary eyes it looked like snow, but clumped warmly to her fingers. As she pushed herself onto her knees, it sloughed off, plopping to the hot earth, billowing to her nose, and filling her hacking and gagging head with the stench of smoke.
Ashes. She had fallen in ashes. It had covered her like thick snowfall, and even after she staggered to her feet, shook, and brushed off her armor, arms, and legs, it caked to her back, plastered in her hair, and continued to drift and tumble, flecking her cheeks, neck, and the back of her hands.
At least the window was real, she realized numbly, as she stared at the blackened glass of the Albatron. While Isola's magic mirror was warped, slightly bent in the middle, and spotted with ash, the handles gleamed, immaculate, the only spark under the roiling skies of this dark world.
Chiyo stooped to pick it up, and fumbled it with a hiss of pain, for the Albatron was just a little cooler than a steaming teakettle. Wrapping her hands in the cuffs of her sleeves, she managed to grip the hot bronze relic until it cooled, by degrees, to a more tolerable pain, then to a mindful warmth.
"Where am I?" While she had thought to ask the Albatron, as her question dwindled in the thin, echoless air, she was stricken by her alien surroundings and the utter loneliness washing over her, for not only was there not a soul in sight, but blessed little of anything else, only the film of ash that grayed this world to every horizon.
When the mirror fizzled, sparked, and stuttered with light, its warped glass blacked out its vision, aside from flickers in the smoky fringe, and Chiyo fretted as she struggled to fill in the blind spot of the Albatron.
The silent center darkened more as the periphery glinted and sparked. Were those columns of fire? Buildings consumed by fire, and toppling into clouds of ash, smoke, and distorted, screaming faces? When the fringe blackened, even darker than the blasted heart of the mirror, her hands trembled, and she looked away. How had Isola mastered this artifact? Its ancient purity thrummed under her fingertips. Whether pure evil or pure good, the Albatron was too pure for Chiyo, who felt herself melting under its half-blind eye.
Look within me.
The voice resonated so deep that her heartbeat plumbed low, her pulse rose, and her harsh, ash-tainted breath rasped out a ragged shout: "I'm looking!" It was a lie. She could no longer bear to look within the Albatron.
Look within me.
Its overwhelming command melted Chiyo's thoughts and fears behind shuddering, squeezed-shut eyes. It was like she had woken too soon, and was frozen in immobility, for no matter how she strained to drop the Albatron's fire-blasted brass to the ashy stones, where it would surely burst into shards, fragments, and embers, her fingers only clutched it tighter, until her white-knuckled grip seared through her clenched eyelids like an x-ray.
That was when she saw it.
Blasting through her screwed-shut eyes and her deafening screams, something sensible unfolded on the Albatron. By screening out the world, she was blind to its smoky mirror, and its inmost window was clear as water.
Was she only imagining it? Or was the Albatron only imagination? Immersed in its imagined window, she was like a ghost in the conjured scenes, standing apart but in its visions: in the rubble of The Mansion of The Shining Prince, amber fox eyes wept as Loren clutched to her furry chest the unconscious Berangere; Lucien, Aito, and Akachi raised swords, leading battered Ephremian columns toward the endless armies of the Stranger, whose cloak of rats, crows, and vultures now swarmed with stormclouds; the slashed, supine body of Queen Suvani, blood beading from her gown.
While she had never seen Suvani, she had no doubt it was the Alsantian monarch. Fused to the imagined mirror, her mind was above doubts and thoughts, and floated on a domain of pure knowledge. At first, she looked on the wounded Queen dispassionately, but as Chiyo's memory of her trials and tribulations infected the scene, her anger bubbled up into hot, excited elation. Wasn't Suvani to blame for all this? All this death, the entire war? As her fury built to a crescendo, her scowl cut through the imagined glass, her blinking eyes shredded the scene to nothingness, and she took in the ash, smoke, and crumbled stone of the blasted world.
But the scraps of enchanted vision persisted, particularly am oddity in the corner of the scene, just as she returned to her senses. For she thought she saw a face. A face she knew. A face she well-knew. Gripping the Albatron tightly, Chiyo closed her eyes.
Conrad stood over the Alsantian monarch, worry-lines creasing his trembling face. Judging by his heaving chest, jetting nostrils, and the sweat beading to a bright sheen on his nose and brow, perhaps that was only fear for his own skin. Even if he had been running for his life, he had fought his way through, for the edge of his clutched sword was bloodied red, and the point dripped a glowing, green ichor.
Her heart leaped. Had Conrad wounded Suvani? No, she realized, as he stooped over her, fear warring with a disgusting admiration for her wounded beauty. Nausea squirmed within Chiyo. How could he? How dare he! While no longer boyfriend and girlfriend, they had just been fighting side by side. Not only had he seen Chiyo blasted into nothingness, but Suvani might be dying, and he was checking her out!
When Suvani's eyes flicked open, there was not even a glint of weakness, but a violent vitality, and Conrad flinched when she clutched his hand. "Help me, cousin." While the Albatron's material glass was soundproof, within the glass, Chiyo could have heard a pin drop.
"Shh!" Conrad said. "You're wounded. And delirious! I'm not your cousin."
"But you are," she breathed. "You're Prince Conrad of Gaona, are you not?" If the Queen had lost any blood, you could not tell it in her fierce blush as she pulled on Conrad's hands to heave herself to a sitting position.
"You'll hurt yourself." Conrad's caution slid into surprise as he realized what she had said. "How do you know me?"
"I'm Lady Fafahite, my prince. Your kinsman. We've been waiting for you." The Albatron seemed to bold-face this lie, as if the mirror footnoted what transpired in its endless visions.
"Fafahite? Why does that sound familiar?" Chiyo gritted her teeth in exasperation, realizing that the Queen, in the heat of the moment, had taken the last name of Isola, whom Conrad had known for weeks.
"Please help me." If Suvani's groan was swelled by her performance, it was also swelled by her gut wound, and at least half real. Despite herself, Chiyo admired the Alsantian monarch. Having had the Albatron before Isola or Chiyo, the Alsantian queen no doubt had spied on Conrad until she knew him better than he knew himself. If it only took a few lucid glimpses through the enchanted mirror to completely disillusion Chiyo of her feelings for him, it was a marvelous feat of acting that the queen, in her weakest moment, should be able to flirt with Conrad now.
"There isn't time, cousin."
"When you say cousin." Conrad's gaze never fell to the wound, so perfectly enraptured was he in everything above the waist. "I hope you mean second or third cousin?"
"Why does that matter?" The Queen winced as she laughed, and stroked Conrad's cheek. "Your parents are first cousins, and you are a prince." A hopeful look stole across his face, and Suvani could not help a sweet but wicked smile. "Only death stops royal ambitions." As Suvani coughed, blood flecked her lips. "Unfortunately, death is near, and you must help me. And it won't be easy."
"I think I can do it."
"Carrying me over your shoulder would be the easy way, but I have a stomach wound, my prince. You'll have to carry me in your arms the whole way."
Steeling himself, Conrad stooped over Suvani. While she was a tall girl, and two years older moreover, he was a very large boy, and so hardened by hiking and battle that he found himself equal to the task of scooping her up, although he staggered as he accustomed himself to her weight.
As Conrad lumbered down the hill, Suvani said, "if you can't go any faster, Vemulus will catch us."
"Did he do this to you?" While Conrad's enraged voice carried over the hill, it was as if the Albatron was too fatigued to pursue the scene. Chiyo still saw only the blood-spattered grasses bearing the faint impression of the fallen queen.
When the battlefield dissolved, she felt the Albatron's intense effort. If the soul of the mirror was unblemished in this magical undercurrent, Chiyo realized now it had been horribly wounded by Havala's flames, perhaps mortally so. As her heart went out to it, she mingled with its unending thoughtfulness, where she glimpsed its ceaseless care for her, its cares for them all, since they were born. The magic mirror had mothered them all, even as the bulk of its awareness was focused on unfolding history.
"There's no hope, is there?" If the mirror could contain harsh truths dispassionately, Chiyo was consumed by its melancholic revelations. How could Isola stand it? Had she not penetrated to this deeper layer of the Albatron? "Alsantia is done, but before that, you're going to die." Chiyo sobbed. "And I will too. Is that what you're saying?"
When the stark realization that no one else was there came home with a shudder, Chiyo wept huge, wet sobs, the loudest she had ever cried in her life. No one would hear her cries. As she wailed, her eyes squeezed, her face trembled, and she tasted the tears drenching her face.
"Is that Chiyo?" The translucent girl's arm was outstretched and ominous. Was it Loren, or her ghost? Was that Berangere over her shoulder? Where was Loren finding the strength?
Just as in her vision of Suvani and Conrad, she saw Loren through closed eyes, and shivered with the realization that the Albatron acted as an intermediary, a circuit between worlds. Although Loren stood in the Mansion's ruins on Earth, and Chiyo in Havala's ashes, both were reflections in the near-omniscient glass of the Albatron.
"Your mind plays tricks on you." The sneering ogress--Chiyo had forgotten the wicked monster's name--lumbered behind the girls. As Loren stared at Chiyo, her eyes wavered, as if she couldn't quite make out what she was seeing. Berangere's eyes were even mistier, and seemed to look through Chiyo to something else. This was so unnerving that Chiyo couldn't help a glance over her shoulder, but saw only tendrils of steam and smoke. "That said," the ogress rumbled, "your mind must be super-tricky, because it's playing tricks on me too."
"You see me?" It was like Chiyo was underwater, for she only mouthed the words, and no sound emerged.
"She's trying to say something." When the ogress reached out to clap Chiyo on the back, it was astonishing to feel the solidity, the reality of the giant hand, even as it blew through Chiyo's insubstantial mirror-form.
"I'm confused," said Berangere. "Is she in Havala, or are we?"
"Havala?" When Loren's hand flashed forward, Chiyo fell forward, a momentous fall so far she felt she had never fallen so far, and felt she would never stop falling from the mirror, the burned world, and the ruins, her consciousness fading, shredding, and peeling on the way, like the paint on the enchanted glass.