While Tripolis slept, the Diamond Storm raged. While Diamond Storm raged, the Assigner bathed in its radioactivity.
And tried to enjoy it, with futile effort, nonetheless. Enjoyment should never come with any effort, but now his mind was elsewhere entirely, not on pleasure but on the past. The hurtful, terrible past that he thought he left behind. Had Vectra not brought up her name, he would have continued his bath in peace, gathering his power and healing after that unseemly business with the Anchor.
As the diamonds were raining on Tripolis, the Assigner stepped into the middle of the shower, the hard granite piercing his skin, his golden blood oozing from all orifices until he couldn't bleed anymore and diverted the stream onto a particularly deep valley where Milada used to go to seek solace from his city. From his presence.
The gashes began to mend as the diamonds pummeled the earth away from his body. The White Snake found himself yearning for pain. It had been way too long, millenia, eons, endless ages since the first speck of the universe burst forth when he could still feel pain.
He missed it sometimes. The more that treacherous bitch rebelled, the more he wanted to inflict hurt upon himself. Constantly being reminded of the woman that left such exquisite wounds on him did nothing for his power.
The tendrils of thought he outstretched to the Queen were left unanswered for days upon days. At first he thought she was perhaps too far away even for his power. Water tended to dull the radioactive soundwaves on which his telepathy cruised.
"Salacia," he sent forth, "bring me the dragon's heart. Bring it to me unless you want my children to dry the last droplet of water in your kingdom and turn your lands into a barren desert."
There was a faint humming ringing in his ears, the song of the Nereid a moment before the throaty croaking of the Queen carried across the stars and inside his head.
"Only if you promise to devour the heart with your very own mouth, Demon."
Finally, a reasonable proposal.
***
The echoes of Rosum's slaughter would reverberate through the Mengana Forest for millenia to come. Soileen said that when the member of the tribe dies violently, they leave a trace of their soul where they died so that a new witch could draw from the energetical mark of their death.
But I was already powerful enough to summon the moon from the sky while my brother held the sun in the palm of his hand.
There was no witchcraft the Vlachy possessed I did not already have.
"That is arrogance at its finest," Soileen said. "You will not be able to beat the White Snake with arrogance."
Volmira could not let go of Rosum. She clutched him to her chest the way mothers held their dead children. Devoid of feeling for death had claimed them too, but entirely too strong in their arms to let go completely.
If I ever thought of Ari as my twin, then Rosum had been Volmira's.
"What would be … the most reasonable solution, then?"
There was a great wound at the center of this conversation that I did not quite manage to find. All I knew was that it had been bleeding for some time, and the lack of attention to it caused this massacre.
"We need to find a place to raise the dragon in peace. Once it is grown and powerful, you can ride it. Ride it and destroy your enemy."
Soileen did not tell me where the wound was. But I was starting to think that it wasn't possible to heal it. And that is why it could not be found. Desperation liked to hide itself out of shame of not being good enough to join the ranks of those emotions that held the cure to disappear.
***
When we soaked our immortal bodies in the lake, just my brother and I, I asked Ari what he thought of raising the little dragon to adulthood.
We did not know much about the power of the beast, but we knew enough not to trust the humans with it. They had their own agendas, and just because mine and theirs aligned for a moment did not mean I could trust them.
But Ari … Areilycus saw something in the beings with such a short life span that I did not see, and often told me that my work on Tripolis was essential. It was the reason I endured, until, of course, the work reached out to him with its poisoned hand and touched his soul. His golden, immortal soul.
He swam towards me, the cold water parting under his care and took me into his arms. I felt weightless.
"If we start a war," he whispered, "it better be for a good reason."
"You are my reason," I said, clinging to his body.
"That's not a reason," he argued. He always argued with me, and I loved him for it. "That is a justification. A poor one at that."
"We could find a world where civilization has progressed beyond superstition and herbal communing."
I felt his lips stretch into a smile near my ear. "And bring a beast of fire into it? Do not underestimate the natural powers of this planet."
"I find nothing interesting or powerful about this planet," I confessed. "I'm not Cleo."
"No," Ari said. "You are made of metal."
"Except I cannot be bent or shaped."
"Hm," he hummed into my ear, petting the soft, wet hair on my neck. "Then you will die."
***
The ocean remained tranquil as Queen Salacia made her way towards the sacred grotto. Her radiant scales appeared subdued under the gentle illumination of the bioluminescent coral. Before her was a stone altar, embellished with lustrous shells and intricate wreaths of kelp, signifying the spot where Neptune's essence had merged back into the ocean.
With a trembling hand, Salacia reached out to trace the inscription etched into the stone. "To Neptune, Sovereign of Tides, my Beloved."
Her thoughts wandered back to that pivotal moment—when her desperation led her to seek the aid of the Demon. Her posture had been steadfast, her crown gleaming, yet inside, she had felt herself faltering.
She had convinced herself that the Demon was the solution, his power a means to heal her fractures. "Just a single favor," she had reassured herself, "simply one favor." She had not grasped the implications of that decision until it was too late.
Salacia's fingers clenched into a fist, her nails digging into her palm. While the Demon was now bound, as she had commanded, the chains of her pact felt like seaweed—ensnaring and suffocating.
Then, her thoughts turned to the twins that swam through her memory.
The girl. And her brother.
"I should never have summoned him," she lamented, her voice quivering. "I should never have engaged the Demon. I should have placed my trust in you, Neptune." As tears mingled with the saltwater, she sank to her knees, her forehead resting against the cold stone of his burial site. "But I was vulnerable. And now... we are all ensnared. By chains I cannot sever."
Above her, the glow of the coral waned, dimming as if the ocean mourned alongside its queen.