The dynamic position of the Dowager Empress's facial muscles would never betray any of her emotions; one could never catch any hint of happiness, sadness, anger or excitement from studying it.
Her voice was the only doer in this specific field; the addition or subtraction of edge in her tonation, to be specific.
"It's two hours past cockcrow, the fraction of the day, you are scheduled to recite sutras and scriptures for your ancestors and subjects' welfare. Follow me, before my cane flies and mutilate one of these silly things."
Little Elena bobbed her head, hurriedly stuffing all her playthings inside a chest box.
Empress Dowager regarded her reflectively for a second, then spun round; her cane walking ahead of her.
Eliana loosened her stiff muscles, gaze rested on her grandmother's cane. When her nervous tension wore off, intellectual acuity took over.
The stiffened scales on the walking stick were somewhat similar in appearance to the golden paddy grains. The carver, who was none other than the high priest of the temple, tactfully hinted the royal family with the 'coat of rigid woody projections' on the cherry wood cane to gear up against the enemies, also requested for the subjects' fancied food—rice.
Before the reticent high priest drifted into the thousand-year slumber, he vouchsafed to her that the walking stick of the Dowager Empress was imbued with three unspoken yet plain meanings.
Two had been denuded of riddles, and one more to go. Eliana possessed the cognizance of exactly where the third meaning laid. An auxiliary reason for her silent consent in the marriage.
Eliana walked five doors down, leaving the hall room behind, crossing the corridor into the throne room.
She stood before the fifteen-feet tall grand double door, manufactured out of nothing but only tungsten carbide, painted with molten gold for the glistening appeal.
The grand panels of two-feet-width each were connected by an antique designed latch.
A remarkable tableau of folklore was exhibited in the shutters. It was painstakingly created by cutting the shaped voids of mythological heroes of Venomblood wielding their weapons against the monsters, including all the tiniest details of their stances and other objects into the tungsten carbide, and then those voids had been stuffed with dead ringers of exact same shapes and sizes.
The idea was similar to the wood inlays, except doing it on tungsten was hundred-fold harder, and required absolute assistance of magic.
Eliana unlatched the imposing door, and pushed it open. Usually, the heavy door would have demanded at least fifty humans' strength, but with her, a gentle touch of palm sufficed it.
She trotted down the stairs, leading to the fifty feet long throne room, on the ground floor.
"Father Mother," Eliana called out in a voice soaked with tears. The sight that stabbed her eyes and crushed her heart was there before her eyes—crystal clear.
As she moved closer, each step felt heavier than the previous one, as though her ankles had been tethered to two boulders, which soldiered on distending and gaining weight.
Empress Regnant, Katherine Ashford's big eyes had been rolled upwards; failure of inbreathing air furrowed her high-arched eyebrows deeply, and left her mouth gaping widely.
Beside her, Emperor Consort, Geoffrey, was trying to tend to his wife desperately, albeit pain surfaced on his face as well, twisting it out of the forever gentle and amicable expression.
Eliana edged nearer; this was the last moment her parents had been in before turning into blue ice sculptures. They had their souls intact, so were the senses---cruelly caged inside the statues.
In accordance to the Venombloooders' belief, every soul loved its body. It would, without any exception, wrestle with King Yama to embody again when he showed up to grant death.
Nonetheless, at that point, the Venomblooder's souls were desperately going up and down, visiting every nook and cranny of the bodies, trying to escape, yet they had been atrociously shackled in the hell of earth.
Eliana curtseyed. "Your daughter came again with yet another failure…" Her lips wobbled, the lump in the throat growing bigger. "I-I…"
Speaking was just as arduous as every time she visited this place. She pushed back the eye-prickling tears welling up adamantly, and swallowed the sour lump.
She had to give voice to the updates, for she served as the only source of information to her parents. Their souls, rotting inside were athirst for news with some smell of freedom like the thirsty travelers yearning for an oasis in the parched desert.
"Seems like restoring the septemviral serpent gems is the only key that can unlock the sunny days for Venomblood again. The Sun God is fully implacable on his decision to steer his sunbeams well clear of Venomblood. He firmly refused to shine on our land until the holy keepers desist from crying blood."
Eliana lowered her gaze and stationed it at the royal couple's feet, unable to take in their suffocated expressions any longer.
"---But, retrieving what is rightfully ours from them isn't plain sailing. They segregated the gems from each other so that they can't combine their holy power; and held them captive using black magic in such places, my divine eye can't reach. Which only denotes my current stage of magic power isn't sufficient to set my foot there."
Overwhelming anger burdened Eliana's tongue, putting it on a momentary stoppage.
"Moreover, any unwise move not only will alert our enemies but also endanger our land further. They won't think twice to stoop lower and torture the serpent gems." Her eyelids flew upward, unveiling the red flames burning in the golden pupils.
The matter of fact was serpents couldn't tolerate temperatures that were below sixteen degrees celsius yet they had been forced into minus seventy degree celsius for an extended period of hundred years.
This endless cursed cycle of freezing the souls to unconsciousness and reviving them again only to push into the same black void of the bottomless pit, indisputably inflicted unwordable anguish on the Venombloooders. Exacerbating it was something, she couldn't afford, for some more time!
"Father-Mother, the news I'm going to break next and the prime reason for tonight's visitation might disquiet your heart. But, I ask for your trust in me. I know I'm not really the person worthy of such requests, however, you have to trust me on this—I've learned my lesson well." Eliana pleaded with her parents.
She wouldn't have the face to ask for a second chance but punishments after what she did, had the victims not been her parents; yet this very point—she ate through her own originators' happiness like a demon's imp— twisted the wound in her heart repeatedly.
She raised her gaze with some effort. "I'm getting married to Hades Costello Alarie, you know him, the Emperor of Firebreath." Her gaze ran between the Empress and Emperor's faces, searching for a hint to their thoughts, although cognizant, they could produce none.
Their current state didn't permit them: realization washed over her followed by a few assumptions of her own. They must be vehemently protesting for her to stop and warning her against treading in barefoot over a bed of hot embers.
Eliana placed her hands over Empress Regnant Katherine Ashford and Emperor Geoffrey's joined hands. She turned a blind eye and deaf ear to her skin's cry at the contact with ice.