Princess Dinan led Fate through the palace, her face pale and her cheeks stained with tears. They often had to stop and address questioning guards that wanted to know why she looked as if she had seen a ghost.
She explained that her father and his advisors had been assassinated by a Gravity Embodiment angry at the king for forcing his brother to leave and join the Fractured.
"The Savior had rushed into the room just as the assassin was about to strike me down," she said, her voice breaking as tears continued their journey down her cheek. "When the assassin died, his Manifestation imploded and destroyed all remnants of his body. So, I am on my way to seek the Ancestor's advice and learn who the successor to the throne is."
The guards apologized profusely for failing in their duty and insisted they accompany her, but she assured them that the Savior was all the protection she needed and that they should go clean up the throne room and prepare a funeral for her father.
Fate had to admit, she was an impressive liar.
After many twists and turns, and a set of stairs leading down that put the ones Fate and Autumn climbed down in that rebel base to shame, they arrived in a circular room about twenty feet across. Unlike everywhere else in the palace, this room was the dark gray of typical stone.
Instead of white gems, it was lit by flickering torches with eerie green flames. Set in the center was a brick well of the same gray stone as the rest of the room. When Fate looked into the well, he found nothing but the void of space.
"So, where's this 'will of the Ancestor' your father mentioned?" Fate asked.
Dinan pointed at the well. "After the Ancestor disassembled the Manifestations of him and his companions and seeded them within our people, his body lost its cohesion and he became a pool of space-time, merging with the dregs left of his Manifestation to continue to guide us throughout the ages."
"And how do we speak to him, exactly?"
"Place your hand within the pool, and he will hear your thoughts, and you, his. When you tell him we are seeking the successor to my father, he will cast his Divine senses over the world and find the one most worthy to replace him."
"When I tell him? Why do I have to do it?"
Dinan turned to him, her sorrow briefly replaced with hate and disdain, before settling on cold indifference. "The Ancestor is now pure Divine Energy of the highest caliber, the kind only a Realized can produce. An Exemplar such as I would die within moments.
"Normally, only a Personification or higher would be allowed to attempt to communicate with him, as only they would survive the process, but our kingdom has not produced a Personification besides Master Gamlesh in thousands of years, and he is uninterested in the mortal affairs of the kingdom.
"Your Manifest Power, along with your Level, should be just enough to allow you to talk to him for a few minutes. I shall watch over you, to ensure nothing goes amiss," she told him.
Fate held her gaze for several minutes. He didn't miss those emotions she had shown him.
'She hates me for what I did. Oh well, it's not like I'll see her again after this war is over.' He broke the staring contest, striding confidently toward the well. 'Here goes,' he thought, activating his Manifest Power and plunging his hand in.
Fate opened his eyes, finding himself floating in the emptiness of space, watching over a planet. It seemed to be in some form of fast-forward, the two moons around it completing dozens of circuits a minute. The globe spun as fast as a top, half of it covered in shadow at all times. In the distance, he saw the sun, unmoving but for brief flashes of solar flares.
"Impressive, isn't it?" asked a voice that was both everywhere and nowhere. It was distinctly male, with a deep, soothing tone fit one might hear from a father as he lulled his child to sleep. "When looking at the planet as a whole, even the concerns of kings seem petty and inconsequential."
That sentence enlightened Fate about what he was seeing. It was Venlanz, the world he had been summoned to.
"You are here because you seek the successor to the Venlanz throne," it continued. "While I do not agree with the methods you have used to force this issue, it cannot be denied that the Emotional children have suffered too long at the hands of their brothers and sisters."
"Uh-huh, sure. Can you do that search thing already?" Fate said to the void, feeling the words leave his mouth but not hearing them.
"You are mistaken. It has already been done. Tell Queen Dinan that I know she is capable of much more than her father. The only reason I brought him to the throne is that I knew he would bring you to me, the key to stopping this foolish quarrel and uniting my children. Just please, cut back on the murder while you're here."
Fate felt a pull toward the planet in front of him, and suddenly he was rushing forward at the speed of a meteor, his gut feeling like he was on a roller coaster.
The planet continued to grow closer and closer, simultaneously spinning slower and slower, until he broke through the atmosphere, careening toward a mass of land that steadily stretched wider and wider until he could see the Venlanz palace –
Fate yanked his hand out of the well, the inky liquid withing not rippling in the slightest. He felt his Manifest Power work in overdrive, steadily leaching away the deep blue that colored his hand and half of his face. He stood there, hunched over with his hands on the well's rim, panting as he waited for the foreign energy to recede.
"What did he say?" Dinan asked behind him, unperturbed by Fate's reaction.
Fate caught his breath, pushing himself off the well. He didn't turn around, gazing at the ceiling as the last vestiges of the blue energy receded. "I hope you know how to run a country… Queen Dinan."