Chapter 521: Aki [Bonus - ]
The clean-up was swift and seamless.
With Rika scampering about to help fold the mats... partially out of genuine loyalty, and partially out of terror that Thor might laugh at her again, the campsite was packed away in under five minutes.
Silas rolled his shoulders, his traveling coat stiff with congealed monster blood.
"Our work in the northern trench is done," Silas announced, looking around at his gathered women. "The fog monster is dead, Rika is secured, and my coat smells like a sewer. Let’s head home."
Before he could take a step toward the vertical shaft, a pair of slender leaf-scented arms wrapped tightly around his waist from behind.
Eluned buried her face between his shoulder blades, her soft emerald hair spilling over his collar.
"You are never jumping into a spatial breach alone again, Silas," Eluned murmured softly, her voice muffled against the fabric of his coat. "I felt you vanish when the fog took you and my heart nearly stopped."
Silas chuckled quietly, reaching back to pat her forearm with a gentle reassuring touch.
"I’m fine, Elu. Took a little detour, killed an overgrown eyeball, and picked up a stray dog."
"I am a Goddess of Beasts, not a stray dog!" Rika yelled from across the cavern, though she clamped her mouth shut the second Morwenna shot her a flat warning glare.
Aeliana stepped forward, her blond hair catching the ambient cyan light as an elegant knowing smile crossed her refined features.
"Lord Silas," the high-elf secretary said gracefully, "there is no need to subject the girls to a march through the northern blizzards."
Silas raised an eyebrow. "You have a shortcut?"
"Before we entered the deeper part of the basin, I anchored a primary spatial beacon at the main border," Aeliana explained, her eyes shimmering with intricate rotating geometric rings of spatial mana. "With the spatial distortion of the weeping eye destroyed, the atmosphere has completely stabilized so I can construct a spell capable of teleporting the entire party, including the Blessed Wolves directly back to our perimeter."
Silas smiled broadly.
"Aeli, Thank you... Do it."
Aeliana bowed with graceful poise, raising both hands toward the vaulted ceiling.
VUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!
Rings of brilliant mirror-like silver runes exploded outward from her fingertips, expanding into a massive rotating spatial array that engulfed the entire cavern in blinding light.
FLASH!
In the span of a single heartbeat, the cavern fell into deafening silence.
Silas, the girls, Thor, the Princess, and the newly sworn Goddess of Beasts vanished into the ether, leaving behind only the cold unmoving pillars of ice.
Minutes ticked by in the empty silent tomb.
Then, high above in the ceiling shaft, a tiny frantic scratching broke the quiet.
SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCH! PLOP!
A small pathetic creature tumbled out of the vertical flue, bouncing off a sloping stalagmite before crashing face-first into a snowdrift on the cavern floor.
It was an anomaly scavenged from the upper crags... a tiny horned mouse-beast barely the size of a man’s fist, its claws completely mangled and bleeding from its desperate attempt to brake its fall along the granite walls.
It scrambled upright, chittering in high-pitched panic with its beady black eyes darting around the massive lightless vault.
It was trapped.
The walls were made of ice and vertical basalt so its ruined claws had no hope of climbing back to the surface then, a low ominous sound rippled through the dead air.
CRACK! KRA-CRACK-SNAP-SHATTER!
Behind where Rika had been entombed, the ancient glacier suffered a catastrophic collapse.
Without the divine soul-anchor of the Goddess of Beasts to sustain the spell, the massive thirty-foot-thick plug of permafrost gave way.
Thousands of tons of ancient ice shattered into fine, powdery rime, completely unsealing the pitch-black, yawning maw of the Great Northern Borehole.
From the lightless depths of the ancient mine, something flickered.
It was a hypnotic purple luminescence.
𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖
The horned mouse tilted its twitching snout, drawn forward by an irresistible primal pull as it scampered across the pulverized ice, slipping into the dark tunnel.
It scurried past rows of petrified wooden support beams, ancient mining carts long turned to dust, and several strange human-shaped protrusions along the walls that resembled grotesque and agonizingly posed statues.
Deeper and deeper it crept, until the narrow tunnel opened into an enormous lightless abyss.
Standing in the center of the forgotten abyss was a monolithic statue carved of seamless void-black obsidian.
The tiny rodent approached the base of the titan, sniffing the stagnant dead air.
Suddenly, the obsidian surface of the monument rippled!
SPLAT!
A thick viscous globule of pulsing, purplish-black slime detached from the statue’s chest, shooting across the floor like a striking viper.
Before the mouse could squeak, the foul entity struck its snout, violently forcing its way through its nostrils, its eyes, and down its open gullet.
SQUEEEEEE—!
The chittering choked into a wet horrific gurgle.
The rodent’s tiny frame arched violently, its ribs snapping outward as its muscular tissue unnaturally expanded.
Its black eyes glazed over, igniting with an unnatural malevolent purple flame as the corrupted beast landed on all four paws, letting out a series of strange clicking sounds from its throat.
It turned its head toward the northern tunnel exit, catching the distant scent of the surface world.
With terrifying unnatural speed, the beast bolted into the dark, racing toward the world above.
...
[Several Days Later]
The morning sun crested the jagged obsidian ridge of the Umbral Basin, spilling pale amber light across the central courtyard of Blessed Land.
The air was clean, stripped of the oily bite of necrotic fog, smelling instead of damp pine and the sweet trace of woodsmoke drifting from the barracks.
Standing just beyond the shadow of the Keep’s vaulted portico, the Princess let out a soft sigh.
Her royal-blue hair caught the morning rays, shimmering like polished lapis lazuli as a gentle draft lifted the loose strands from her temples.
She was no longer wearing the understated silk court gown she had arrived in.
In its place was a traveling dress crafted by the territory’s master tailor... a garment of deep slate-gray wool lined with supple white buckskin, cinched at her slender waist with an embossed leather belt and edged in subtle leaf-green embroidery.
It moved with her body, neither binding her ribs nor trailing in the dust, giving her an effortless regal silhouette that looked like a Princess.
’I know my maids will hate it though.’
Gathered in a loose semicircle around the stone flagstones were the women she had become close with.
Tasmin stood with her arms folded across her leather-clad chest, her dark void-daggers resting quietly in their sheaths and her sharp eyes carrying a rare relaxed warmth.
Beside her, Brida leaned her weight on the haft of her cleaver poleaxe, chewing on a clean stalk, while Thora stood wiping grease from her calloused palms with a rag with her blacksmith’s apron smelling of smoke.
Eluned lounged gracefully near the central fountain that Silas had recently installed with her long emerald locks drifting on the breeze and the living vines wrapped around her wrists pulsing with green light.
Morwenna stood with Tidebringer slung across her broad shoulders, her boots coated in dried road grit, watching the royal scion with an amused smirk.
Even Talira had climbed out onto the high slate shingles of the Keep’s roof, basking in the direct heat of the morning sun like a crimson cat with her scaled wings half-spread as she lazily flicked her tail and gave a languid two-fingered wave toward the courtyard.
Thor stood broad and immovable near the center with her silver battle armor gleaming in the sun and Mjölnir strapped securely to her leather war-belt as her storm-blue eyes crinkled with good humor.
"You managed to survive seven days in the dark without getting eaten, trampled, or turned into an icicle," Morwenna called out, her gravelly voice breaking the morning quiet. "That’s better than half the deckhands I used to press into service on the salt coast... before I trained them of course"
"She didn’t just survive though, she carried her own bowl!" Thora grunted with approval, tossing her rag over a shoulder. "She didn’t complain about your bread, either... you should be grateful, that thing tastes like my shit."
"Fucking Dwar—"
Eluned stepped forward, offering a graceful gentle sweep of her hand.
"The forest spirits will miss your laughter at the spring, little one. The week passed far too swiftly and the basin was brighter with you among us."
’Look at her forming all these words like she’s not happy to get more alone time with him.’ Morwenna clicked her teeth, why did Elu insist on being so fake?
The Princess felt a sudden thick warmth swell behind her ribs.
For twenty-five years, parting words in her life had consisted of rigid court bows, calculating nods, and the cold rehearsed well-wishes of house retainers who cared only for her family’s annual stipend.
These women had seen her scream at ancient bone hands, watched her slip on carpets trying to throw kicks, and shared bowls of fatty stew around campfires under the dead earth.
She raised both hands, bowing her head with deep grace.
"Thank you. Every single one of you. I... I have never known seven days like these. I will not forget them."
"Don’t get all weepy on us now, Princess," Tasmin said, a slight grin touching the corner of her mouth. "You’ll make the Captain look soft."
Silas took a slow step forward, separating himself from the stone archway of the portico.
The Princess’s eyelashes fluttered as her gaze met his.
Bathed in the dawn light, the Lord of Blessed Land carried an imposing settled presence that made the air around him feel warm.
His dark hair had grown a fraction longer over the past week, the unruly black bangs brushing against his temples and grazing the collar of his clean charcoal-gray tunic.
Beneath his dark brows, his eyes were clear piercing blue, encircled by that unmistakable ring of gold that looked amazing.
He reached his right hand into the pocket of his coat, rubbing the back of his neck with his left in that familiar self-conscious manner.
"I’m usually pretty terrible at this sort of thing," Silas admitted. "Diplomatic gifts, courtly tokens... none of that was ever in my job description but Thora showed me how to set the wire, and Eluned helped me temper the facet so the mana wouldn’t bleed out."
He drew his hand from his coat, opening his broad calloused palm.
The Princess’s breath hitched in her throat.
Resting against his glove was a slender exquisite necklace.
The chain was forged of whisper-thin links of dark star-iron, cold and dark as midnight.
Suspended along the collar were five mana diamonds, their surfaces polished just enough to reveal the brilliant prismatic fires trapped within their cores... azure, amber, green, and deep violet.
They were the very stones they had recovered from the lower deposits of Mine KB22, carrying the mineral heartbeat of the deep earth.
"It’s not cut like royal jewelry," Silas said, stepping directly in front of her. "It’s a bit rough around the edges but the mana inside these diamonds has been stabilized by my core. If you ever find yourself in a room with a bad person, or someone tries to push a spiritual suppressive field onto you, the stones will flash and break the pressure wave."
He tilted his head slightly. "Mind if I put it on you?"
"I... I would be honored, Lord Silas," she murmured softly, her porcelain skin warming as she bowed her head and reached up to sweep her heavy,royal-blue hair over her left shoulder, baring the pale curve of her neck.
Silas stepped behind her.
His fingers were broad and rough and when the back of his knuckles grazed the sensitive skin at the base of her throat, an electric shiver raced down the Princess’s spine, making her shoulders lock for a fraction of a second.
CLICK!
The tiny star-iron clasp snapped securely into place as the cool weight of the diamonds settled against her collarbone, and immediately, a soothing pulse of warm mana rippled across her chest, perfectly synchronized with her heartbeat.
Silas stepped back around, looking down at her with a gentle satisfied nod.
"Looks good on you," he said quietly then, his blue-gold eyes met hers with a warm focus. "Stay safe out there, Aki."
The world seemed to drop its volume by half.
’Aki...’
The syllables hung in the crisp mountain air like a bell struck in an empty temple.
The Princess stood motionless, her azure eyes wide, her lower lip parting in silent stunned wonder.
In the Supreme Royal Family, names were a divine privilege reserved exclusively for those who awakened a Lord Core.
To be an Unawakened scion was to be stripped of an identity, relegated to "The Asset," or "The Nameless One." depending on your gender.
To bestow a name upon oneself was punishable by exile and to have an outsider bestow an unauthorized title was considered high treason and a grave insult.
Yet as the word settled into her chest, there was no offense and there was no cold indignation.
There was only a violent fluttering swarm of warmth that exploded in her stomach, rising through her throat and staining her cheeks with an uncontrollable fiery pink blush.
He hadn’t given her a formal decree... he had given her an affectionate personal nickname.
’Aki.’
It was simple... but this name...
...It was hers.