Ghostwater Aftermath - Sha Miara (By Coldbringer) (Patreon)

Warning: this chapter contains light spoilers for the conclusion of the Ghostwater arc. Please be aware.

At the heart of the Ninecloud Continent lay an iridescent landscape of high towers and gleaming gemstone spires, a continent-spanning architecture that had long since outgrown what was commonly understood when men referred to a city.

An unbroken, almost unending landscape of civilization.

From sea’s edge to highest mountaintop, from subterranean termite cities and their forgotten roads populated by fallen things that could no longer be called men, to cloudscraping edifices miles high, to the flying citadels and cloud fortresses that knew no land at all, home to the men and women regarded as closest to the heavens themselves-- 

It was all one city, stretching across over three thousand miles of the Ninecloud Continent.

A megalopolis.

The Ninecloud City.

Taken in small part, if viewed through the eyes of a single sacred artist, any given corner of it would have appeared as a landscape of towering spires in all the colors of the rainbow, as though each had been hewn from a separate gemstone. Amethyst and sapphire and emerald shone in the sun, with glittering crystal bridges crossing from one to the other to cross the highest heights as airships and great beasts crossed beneath bejeweled arches and around great domes. Sometimes, the bridges rose higher, connecting to the wealthiest parts of the city where entire districts were built atop solidified clouds; creating entire clusters of civilization where great Lords and Ladies and their families could live for entire mortal lifetimes without ever needing to touch the ground. 

Taken in larger part, if viewed from the throne of the Luminous Queens, or from lower orbit, the city’s greater nature as a work of millennia of ekistical science would have been revealed; a work of geometry best appreciated from a point of view that only Heralds, Monarchs, and perhaps the Abidan themselves would have the chance to appreciate. Unbending, straight-lined roads extending across half a continent, geometrical straight-edged metropolises that each fit into a cohesive, greater urban whole, with precisely cultivated exurban and suburban outlying regions before giving way to the precisely cultivated and well-defended rural regions that fed the central regions.

It was a land protected by great, continent-spanning scripts, capable of defending even against Dreadgods.

Taken in entire part, an observer might have said that the entire geometry resembled that of one massive diamond, faceted lines carved across half the southern Ninecloud continent.

It was at the most central facet of that millenarian urban diamond that the most dreamlike heart-city of it all, Ninecloud Court could be found: The Ninecloud Court, the heart of the Ninecloud Continent, the forbidden shrine-city itself, worshiped by the tens of billions of the Ninecloud Empire, reviled by its even more numerous enemies, the jeweled capital from where the millions of descendents of the Sha clan lived and breathed, and plotted, and ruled, and warred. 

The Ninecloud Court resembled no other city on Cradle. Rather than a thing of streets and buildings, it looked like an unending palace that built upwards in an almost stepped procession of jeweled colors, and hanging gardens and cloud-courts: one palace after another, carved of ruby and citrine, jade and topaz, quartz and sapphire, emerald and amethyst, built higher, onwards and ever upwards until they reached the highest heart of it all. 

It was from the center of the Ninecloud Court that one tower in particular arose, at the confluence of where all the iridescent palaces built upon one another, all leading up to one tower in particular. A rose-tinted edifice of solid diamond, a sky-scraping pillar of Monarchy that rose and rose, and rose, and climbed for tens upon tens of miles, rising so, so high, through all the sky, until it ended in that liminal in-between, somewhere in the airless nothing that came between the atmosphere and the beginnings of outer space itself. 

A rose-tinted diamond spire, a citadel of thousands upon thousands of levels, ringed by a solid rainbow of royal madra, rising so tall it penetrated the clouds and kept rising ever onwards, higher and higher, until the land itself was nothing but a memory, ever-obscured by clouds.

The Immortal Spire of Celestial Radiance. 

It was into a room very near the top of the Immortal Spire that Sha Miara kicked back her legs and huffed, as she withdrew her senses from the Tourmaline Sage’s communication package - a working of Authority that lingered in the air, held in place by the teenage Monarch’s will. A working that Miara hadn’t quite had the patience to listen to the entirety of. A working containing a Sage’s long, groveling letter of apologia. 

Too long, as it turned out.

Ain’t no way I’m listening to all that shit, the teenaged empress thought, cutting herself off from the working. Too long, didn’t read.

Still, she’d gathered enough to get a sense of what had happened at Ghostwater.

A disaster, certainly. 

But who was to blame?

“Uncle Jandar screwed up big this time, didn’t he?” Sha Miara muttered into the massive, empty ancestral throne room of the Luminous Queens, knowing that she would be heard by the person that mattered. 

Thirty or so seconds later, Sha Relliar emerged, a middle-aged commander of war, his silver-winged hair slightly disheveled as he sprinted from absolutely nowhere to obey his Monarch's call. The moment he arrived, Relliar's senses reached out towards the lingering authority in the air, the remnant of a Sage’s working that allowed the Tourmaline Sage communicate with his Monarch from across half the world.

Relliar was no Sage, but he was an ancient enough Herald that interacting with a Sage's workings, even countermanding them to his own ends was hardly a task beyond him. In less than fifteen seconds, Relliar was done processing the full contents of Jandar's long, sorry message.

“Jandar couldn’t have foreseen Northstrider’s reemergence,” Relliar eventually said, sighing. "He asks why you failed to inform him. A Monarch should have been able to detect another Monarch, no matter the distance."

Uh, he did? Miara hadn’t bothered listening for that long into the message.

Fortunately, the Moonheart Iron Body separated her emotions from her body for the most part. Her face didn’t so much as flicker in response to her uncle’s question, even though she felt all kinds of awkward all of a sudden.

Honestly, Miara had forgotten all about checking on the World of Radiance lately–the technique by which the Monarchs of the Unbroken Line of Celestial Radiance could interact with Fate–in the last couple of weeks, but she wasn’t about to tell that to her prickly ‘uncles’ who both had centuries on her age. She’d never hear an end to their complaints and tirades.

“My mother didn't know either," Miara sighed somberly. It was true, even—Sha Leilala had believed Northstrider dead, and Miara hadn’t exactly remembered to check in the last few weeks on the ancient bane of dragons had ever crawled out of his own grave. Why bother?

“Still,” Relliar insisted.

"The Monarch of the Hungry Deep is old, his connections are inscrutable, and his means are even less known to us,” Miara said gravely, putting on her best bullshit-face. “For all we know, he has other pocket worlds to recuperate in. If he did so, and minimized his higher-level interactions, then he would be almost invisible to Fatescrying and every other power of the Luminous Queens.”

Relliar nodded, if perhaps more slowly than Miara would have liked to see. "Jandar is also requesting that you facilitate his party’s return."

Jandar, as a Sage of the main Sha family who had built or updated most of the Ninecloud Court’s core spatial scripts, certainly had the power and authority return on his own, even from Ashwind, but with the added burden of an entire cloud fortress, it would take a significant outlay of resources even for him–even with the spatial scripts on the Sha cloud fortress in question.

Even a minor working from a Monarch could vastly expedite such a trip.

“Fine,” Miara shrugged. Then she focused her will across the continents and oceans, across half the world as she closed her eyes. “Come home.”

The Sixth Radiant Cloud, one of the Inner Ninecloud Court’s legendary pleasure yachts, returned to the Ninecloud Citadel almost immediately, teleporting into place just over the main assembly courtyard, the actual court of the Ninecloud Court, several tens of miles directly below where she now sat. 

Miara closed her eyes for a moment. That working of Authority hadn’t been a minor one–she was still new to her powers, and couldn’t quite work the ancestral Authority of the Luminous Queens with the ease of her mother, even if she borrowed from the authority of the Luminous Throne she sat upon. She opened her eyes, and resolved herself to endure what would surely be more than one truly unpleasant conversation.

First things first.

“Come.”

Sha Jandar appeared before the Luminous Throne, standing tall in all his nine-colored, crimson-bearded, bald-headed radiance. One of the world’s greatest Soulsmiths immediately spoke, standing like a resplendent king, grave and proud and eagle-eyed. “Luminous Queen,” he said gravely, nodding his head.

Only nodding his head.

“Lower,” Miara muttered, unveiling herself–and the Tourmaline Sage immediately fell to his knees, where he belonged, bent beneath the weight of her spiritual pressure, with his spine properly bent as it belonged.

“This isn’t dignified– !” he squawked.

It was true that Sha Jandar was her uncle, one of the top five most important figures in the Ninecloud Empire, and her primary tutor besides. All true facts, no matter how… unfortunate. 

But after a screwup of this magnitude, even a Sage deserved a good humbling, and the collective ancestral wills of her bloodline all agreed with that judgment–even the bloody old conquerors deeper in the bloodline who might have had a wider latitude of tolerance towards losses and other setbacks. Or perhaps a shorter latitude, in this case.

Because this was just stupid.

“Now then, Uncle,” Miara said softly, interrupting him. “You’re going to tell me exactly how you screwed up our final expedition to Ghostwater this badly. Were you outmaneuvered by the enemy Heralds? Did Northstrider’s reemergence in the last five minutes really screw up everything that badly? Please don’t tell me you were sleeping around with the enemy again.”

…

As it turned out, he had been. Liberally. Shamelessly. 

And, more importantly, his broader lapses in judgment had in fact played a major role in the destabilization of events there. Allowing, even encouraging Underlords to enter while the pocket world was destabilizing? Overlords had been fighting, accelerating the breakdown further still? Parizad had been deploying spatial scripts?? Foundation treasures had been looted destructively, without care, accelerating the pocket world’s breakdown by weeks? And what was this about Ghostwater elixir? And a strange guide construct?

And all without successfully recovering the dimensional matrix or the oracle tree?

Most of all–Miara was not pleased with how evasive Jandar was being about the particulars of how exactly some of these screwups had escaped his notice. 

Miara teleported him away in disgust, but not before making it clear that he owed the Throne of the Luminous Queen a few significant acts of… diplomatic service was the most polite way to put it. Acts of Indentured servitude or slavery might be more accurate. He owed the Luminous Throne big for this failure. 

How much he owed, even Miara wasn’t certain of.

Not yet, at least.

And that it was his choice to stew on—whether he worked willingly, or coerced under soul oath, and that she didn’t much care which he chose.

Miara had no illusions as to what he would choose. She and Relliar both sighed, and she resolved herself for what would surely be an even more unpleasant conversation.

…

Now it was time for the next.

With another working, her older brother, Parizad, appeared before her.

Miara’s eyes widened a little. 

He looked…

Beaten up. Bloody. 

And where were his shoes?

“Sister,” he said, nodding his head slightly, grimacing. 

This one, also, didn’t kneel.

“Brother,” she acknowledged, not bothering to force the issue. Not yet, at least. She tilted her head, and she, deliberately, stretched her lips into a wide, mocking grin. “It sounds like you got greedy.”

Parizad exploded. “That construct could have changed everything. Everything!”

“Your mission was the dimensional matrix!” Relliar thundered, stomping his foot and sending Parizad reeling. A half-veiled Herald’s ire filled the room, oppressing the Court of the Luminous Throne with a spiritual pressure that would send even Lords reeling, let alone a Gold. “The things the Ninecloud Court could do if it had a pocket world of Ghostwater’s size and stability, if we could create an environment of actual Radiance aura–even creating a greater grove for multiple Heart-Piercer Trees wouldn’t have been beyond question! All wasted because of you and Jandar’s stupidity!”

“...I should have been able to succeed in the dimensional matrix’s extraction regardless,” Parizad said, eyeing Relliar and Miara with bitterness. He was on his knees before Relliar’s spiritual pressure, but to his credit, his will had not broken. “Northstrider’s emergence–what was I supposed to do, uncle? That construct was worth the diversion, I had almost every factor of the situation under control–the sapience properties it possessed, the multiprocessing it was capable of despite existing on such small scale–!”

Miara was already tuning him out. Sha Miara’s Inner Court tutors had long been in the process of teaching her the principles of Soulsmithing, refining, scripting–the core strengths of the Ninecloud Empire, all three of which she had to have the equivalent of an Archlord master’s competence in… eventually. Mastery of the basic principles, at least for now.

But her brother had gone far, far beyond mere education in the principles. He had made Soulsmithing his–everything. His reason for being. The core of his combat style. He had even altered his Path away from the core Path of Celestial Radiance for the sake of his… obsession.

He was, by all accounts, a prodigy in this regard–even the Tourmaline Sage didn’t consider it a waste of time to give him some pointers.

And that would have been fine, if his singleminded focus hadn’t left him so, so woefully lacking in every other aspect of humanity that mattered. Certainly, lacking in perspective.

Miara sighed. “I don’t care about your damn constructs, brother. I just don’t. Tell me what happened in Ghostwater.”

Parizad was still recovering from Relliar’s outburst. In his shambled, torn robes and shoeless, bloodied self, he made for a rather miserable sight as he glared at them both, bitterly, filled with rancor.

“If it wasn’t for the Heaven’s Wish–”

Miara sighed. “If it wasn’t for the Heaven’s Wish,” she echoed his words, scathingly. “You’d probably be the Monarch right now, not me. And what about it? What would you do with mother’s power, Parizad? Start more wars? Do you really think I don’t know what you and your… I won’t call them friends… co-conspirators are up to?” Miara’s eyes narrowed. “Stop it.”

“Those bastards killed mother,” Parizad said, his eyes narrowing in turn.

“No, they’re dead.” 

Every leader of the rebellion responsible for the weaponized horde of hunger and plague spirits that had critically damaged Sha Leilala’s lifeline had been struck down, struck down by the Ninecloud Court’s armies or sealed inside their own castle by an entire glacier of ice, reinforced by Leilala’s own Monarch’s authority–meaning that that ice would never melt, except if eroded by some equal power. The northern rebels were as dead and interred in death as it was possible to be.

“But that doesn’t mean that we need to wipe out their nation with them,” Miara continued. “You’d be satisfied with nothing less than executing their entire bloodlines out to the ninth generation, like some ancient blood tyrant. Don’t even bother denying it.”

“You shouldn’t even bother denying what the people of the northern Jadecountry think of us,” Parizad said, his eyes narrowing to meet Miara’s. “Forget the leaders, we should dig up their entire foundation by the root and stem. Even the peasants in the Jadecountry hate us. They’re all guilty.”

“No,” Miara said.

She wasn’t going to wipe out hundreds of millions just to end a national blood feud. It had been going on for millenia. Not even her tutors could properly explain why those silly hatreds would never die, or how it had all even started.

But this wasn’t the answer.

“Do you even care about mother–”

“Not even going there. Goodbye, brother. You will report to me more on your role in this entire disaster when you’re feeling less… incontinent.”

Miara teleported him back to his rooms and sighed, slumping back into her throne for a little– 

Then she remembered one last thing.

“...And don’t even think about leaving your rooms until you’re an Underlord,” she muttered, throwing her voice through the Immortal Spire’s scripts with her madra in a way that ensured that he would get the message.

Talking to Parizad always exhausted her, especially because he was one of the very few people she ever spoke to anymore as… herself, not as the Luminous Queen. 

Unfortunately, he was a bastard. And he always spoke so condescendingly to her–as he did to everyone, really–but especially to her, because he was her older brother by ten entire years. Even her advancement to Monarch hadn’t changed that. Much.

If he didn’t talk like that to just about everyone, she’d take it more personally.

But she wouldn’t lord their own mother’s power over him–down that path lay nothing but heartbreak, most of her ancestor’s wills had collectively assured her. 

Family was family.

…and, he was right. If it had even been possible for men to inherit, he would have been the one chosen for the Heaven’s Wish. His talent with the sacred arts was the equal of her own, according to every measure of aptitude and tutor they’d ever had, and his dedication to his Path and loyalty to the Ninecloud Court was second to none. And he had walked his Path for ten entire years longer than her.

The problem was that he was just… so… insufferable, and far, far too prone to violence. Blood followed him wherever he walked, on account of his preference to kill his problems out of hand–as if he was some damned Akura, or worse yet, a dragon.

Miara opened her eyes, and took a sip of her drink of mundane apple juice. She resolved herself, and glanced at Relliar.

“It’s time,” she said, and he nodded.

Time for what would be the least pleasant conversation of all. 

Or so she was warned by the ancestral wills of her great, great grandmother on down.

“Northstrider, let us meet,” Miara said, exercising the full scope of her Authority, letting it resonate faintly through the world.

A full thirty seconds later, there was a far-off yes in response. 

A particularly cold one.

Miara stepped out of the world, and entered the World of Radiance—her Monarch’s void space. With a mental tug, Relliar followed.

And there before them stood Northstrider, the Monarch of the Hungry Deep himself. 

Only a projection of him, but even so, he was an… intimidating… sight.

He stood tall, taller than even Relliar. His black-scaled arms were crossed over his muscular, mostly bare chest. His skin was deeply tanned, his draconic eyes golden and slitted, piercing outwards from the dark hollows of his eyes, and his beard looked like it hadn’t been shaved in years. And just like the legends said, he scarcely bothered with proper clothing at all–as if he preferred to loot half a dozen different rotting graveyards rather than go see an actual tailor.

But only a small part of Miara noticed his outer appearance. His power–his presence, his spirit–was as powerful as anything she or her mother had ever encountered. A man whose presence could make the world itself tremble, if he willed it.

One of the few figures left on Cradle old enough to have seen the Dread War with their own eyes. A man who had singlehandedly waged war against continents, slain heroes and legends, villains and myths beyond count, and fought with heavenly messengers.

This was, truly, a Monarch to be wary of, even by the standards of the ancestral memory of the Queens of Celestial Radiance. 

The Monarch of the Hungry Deep gazed upon them in turn–and he had no eyes for the Herald. 

He cast his forbidding, draconic gaze downwards towards the newest Luminous Queen, and she stared back.

Sha Miara’s expression was as flat and unyielding as his, her spirit radiating the collective will and authority of seven thousand unbroken years of Radiance Monarchs. Through the Mantle of the Luminous Queen, the guise she adopted for all her interactions outside the Inner Court, with her spirit fully unveiled, she should have been an intimidating presence to anyone on all of Cradle.

Deference was owed between Monarchs, especially ones as ancient as they. Always. It was the bedrock of the unwritten accords by which those of their advancement kept intact the foundations of the world.

They kept staring at one another. 

Weighing, measuring.

Judging.

…

Northstrider rolled his eyes upwards and sighed, as if asking why, not from her, but from the heavens themselves.

“A fourteen year old this time?”

…

Miara twitched.

Monarchs were in full control of themselves, always. A Monarch did not mutter, not before adversaries, and not to themselves—especially not the infamously laconic Monarch of the Hungry Deep, who had long doled out words so parsimoniously it was as though each and every one of them cost him actual blood essence. 

Miara’s eyes narrowed by millimeters, and her teeth began to show, just a little. 

If this man had muttered, that meant that it was a choice taken, fully and with intent, not some unconscious reaction of a senior faced by a junior. 

He’s insulting me. Deliberately. 

And her uncle Relliar was well aware of that fact–he was already seething besides her.

He’s looking down on me. 

Miara would have to disabuse the Monarch of the Hungry Deep of that notion. 

Thoroughly. 

…

Unfortunately, though.

That insult had only been a precursor, a mere setting of the stage for the tone of the rest of the negotiations that followed. 

Negotiations that became uglier, and uglier.

But only for her.

It was half an entire hour later that Sha Miara withdrew first from her own World of Radiance, fury coursing through her veins.

“I’d rather negotiate with an actual death Remnant! What an infuriating, bloodless rock of a man!”

Uncle Relliar followed her out of the World of Radiance, anger writ all across his features. Jandar immediately appeared before them.

“Did you get the dimensional matrix?” Jandar asked, popping up out of nowhere.

Miara looked her other, much less favored uncle all the way up and down, her eyes narrowed. 

Then she rolled her eyes upwards and sighed, as if asking why, not from him, but from the heavens themselves.

Unfortunately, she had to admit that interacting with the Monarch of the Hungry Deep was better by far than any tutor when it came to learning the how of embracing Monarchy. How to act the part, how to play the role. How to know, down to your very bones, that you were first under heaven.

And when Northstrider condescended, he had style.

“If I see you again with my own eyes in the next week, uncle Jandar, you’re getting the next shift of Panopticon oversight.”

“You can’t be–”

Miara waved him off–and one working of authority later, he was teleported off to a city six thousand miles away, down by the western coast. The Throne of the Luminous Queen had been getting emergency notifications from there–something about a peasant rebellion over taxes or whatever. Let the Tourmaline Sage handle it, he always had been good at dealing with those particular problems, at least. Heads, sticks, the leaders, the usual.

“And what do you want?” Miara said, turning to her other uncle. There had to be a reason he was still present–the Monarch negotiations were done.

“It’s time for your tutoring session,” Relliar said gravely.

Oh shitfuck and NO. Miara’s eye actually twitched, completely unconsciously, even through her Moonheart Iron Body. 

“Delay, Uncle,” Miara said gravely, wholeheartedly and shamelessly falling back into the perfect poise her Iron Body gave her. 

Relliar frowned. 

“Your veils are still very poor, young lady. You need more training. In that, and etiquette, and much else besides.”

Shit, Miara internally quailed. He must have seen the twitch.

“We have one last conversation of importance to have,” Miara said, speaking in the royal plural, her eyes grave, every inch the image of a Luminous Queen, with the perfect poise of thousands of years.

In the meanwhile, her mind desperately whirled for an excuse. Any excuse.

Relliar frown only deepened. “You’ve already spoken to Jandar, and your brother, and the returned Monarch. Who else is worth interrogating?”

Uh, who else was worth talking to? 

She needed to buy at least an hour of time before she could claim it was her bedtime–and unfortunately, that was actually true. As a newly created Luminous Queen, actual sleep really was the best and only way to really restore her mental state. Wakefulness elixirs that could work on her were truly few and far between, had costs measured in entire cities, and could only be brought out for true emergencies.

Who else is worth interrogating?”

Right. The answer came to her, and Miara snorted. It should have been obvious.

“The ones I actually trust to tell me the truth,” she said, meeting Relliar’s eyes gravely. 

“Who?” Relliar asked, though he did seem interested.

Success! No more tutoring today yaaaay.

Two workings of authority later—she gave these ones the respect of a warning of imminent spatial transfer—her favorite older cousins, Neraitha and Junesca, stood before her.

Then they both, instantly, fell into identical courtly bows, one knee on the ground, their eyes lowered as their crimson hair draped their forms.

It was a scene that could have come out of a painting. Even by the Inner Court’s standards, her cousins were preeminent beauties, to the point that even she was almost jealous.

Puuuberty, I can’t waaaaait.

“We don’t need to hear from them,” Relliar said, irritably. “Not after we’ve heard from Jandar and your brother.”

“I trust those two to tell the version of the truth that best suits them,” Miara said scathingly, as her eyes flickered towards Jandar’s daughters. “Now you’re both going to tell me what really happened in Ghostwater.”

Neraitha and Junesca’s bows both deepened.

Ah, the respect she was owed. So pleasant. Such a nice change from the older pricks.

…

Her favorite older cousins did tell her, accurately and to the point. At length, and in almost exhausting detail. Everything about how the final Sha expedition to Ghostwater had been so thoroughly ruined.

Miara sat back, grimacing even despite her Moonheart Iron Body.

The pocket world had become a madhouse of chaos by the end of it all, apparently. No wonder Parizad had lost control of events, despite subsuming the pocket world’s central scripts.

Still. How could Parizad have screwed up this badly? He had been preparing for this mission for the better part of eight years, ever since Northstrider’s presumed fall. The mission to recover the dimensional matrix should have been fairly straightforward, in the scheme of things, thanks to the Tourmaline Sage’s preparations.

“So,” Miara said, speaking into the silence as Relliar looked on. Even he had been disturbed by the twin’s story. “My brother tells me that the interlopers ruined everything. Your father blames it all on the Monarch. What actually happened on our end to ruin our control over events in the pocket world? This was my mother’s plan, and it should have been assured, between Jandar and Parizad’s efforts.”

Junesca rolled her eyes. “Where do we even start?”

Neraitha grimaced. “Father was too preoccupied chasing Ladies to pay close attention to events inside Ghostwater, let alone manage his relations with the other Sages and Heralds.”

Junesca sighed. “Before we entered, some of father’s personal valuables were stolen the morning after a… rendezvous… with a Lady from an opposing faction. He behaved erratically ever after, more preoccupied with recovering them than managing Parizad.”

“He pillowed with an enemy faction’s Lady?” Miara asked excitedly, leaning forward intently. This was interesting, no matter how irresponsible and stupid it was. “What exactly did he do? Please don’t tell me he tried making the moves on the Sage of the Silver Heart.” 

That would be so scandalous if he had! The Akura Sage was a famed beauty, and as forbidding and dreaded a figure as she was throughout the Akura Empire, she was at the same time one of the world’s most eligible unmarried prospects for Archlords and higher (there were rankings for this sort of thing, and they were a favorite subject in court gossip).

“Worse,” Junesca muttered. 

“So much worse,” Neraitha scowled.

“Infinitely worse, heavens.”

“It was a dragon Archlady,” Neraitha finished.

Relliar palmed his face with his hand and sighed. 

Miara dragged both of her hands down her face.

Gah. Why, why did one of her more important uncles have to be such a heavens-damned degenerate? A dragon Archlady? Really? If he had at least been some branch family nobody, she could have at least pretended to ignore the issue. But nooo, the Tourmaline Sage was at the top of the Inner Court, meaning that he was her problem alone–and unfortunately for her, he was a high deviant even within that rarified circle of perversion (yet another thing about her own family that she would have preferred not to learn after becoming the new Luminous Queen).

At least he hadn’t brought back any more mixed-race children this time, her mother’s ancestral will assured her, and she had to agree. 

That would have been an additional headache.

“...And, in large part due to all of that,” Neraitha said, after giving her own overview of the subsequent mistakes that happened with Jandar’s management of events outside of Ghostwater, “Parizad actually succeeded in his mission–he established dominion over the habitat enclosing the dimensional matrix–only to be distracted by a lesser treasure the Skysworn intruders found inside Ghostwater, ruining everything when the Monarch appeared.”

“Not quite everything,” Miara grimaced. “We did end up getting the matrix in the end, but it cost us.”

“How?” Neraitha asked. Both twin’s eyes were wide. “I thought it was lost to us.”

“We had to buy it,” Miara said, her grimace deepening. Negotiating with the Monarch of the Hungry Deep had always been a truly unpleasant task for the Luminous Queens in the centuries since the Dread War, Miara’s ancestors from the last four generations all agreed, and her own recent experience had only confirmed that impression.

If she never saw Northstrider again, it would be too soon.

"What did it cost?" Neraitha asked. 

“You don’t even want to know,” Miara’s voice was low, grim.

Northstrider was perhaps the most mercenary of Monarchs aside from the Eight-Man-Empire–insofar as they debatably counted as a Monarch anyway–and his services and favor did not run cheap, even by historical Monarch standards. Especially being that he was literally above money.

It took far more valuable things than scales to move sacred artists who had advanced beyond Archlord. 

No matter how many mountains of scales you had, that did not change.

"What even was this dinky little construct," Miara grumbled into the ensuing silence, waving a hand in irritation. 

Jandar and Parizad had both mentioned something about one particular construct–and the idea that they could have been distracted even a little from a mission this important to the Ninecloud Court over one little construct was, far and away, the biggest anomaly in this entire story she was hearing.

As one, Neraitha and Junesca’s eyes lit up. “We met someone incredible in there, Miara. He’s the owner of this construct - a fully sapient guide construct named Dross.”

“A Gold with a sapient construct? Impossible,” Relliar said, frowning. 

Miara was inclined to agree, as did the will of all her ancestors. Sapient constructs could exist—their very own Ninecloud Soul, for instance—but constructs on that level weren't even constructs anymore, not really, they were existences better compared to an artificial nation, or a work of public infrastructure. The Ninecloud Soul was based on a foundation of tens of thousands of sentient Remnants aligned in resonance under the effects of Radiance madra until sapience was achieved. 

Obviously, only fairly high-level Remnants could have the metaphysical density required for any higher thought at all, so even the least of the Remnants comprising the Ninecloud Soul were akin to Overlords, and the keystone components were the Remnants of over a dozen Sages and Heralds, aligned in resonance to achieve parallel thought that echoed to all the lower level echelons of Remnants beneath them.

That was how hard it was to achieve true sapience in soulsmithing.

...Of course, there were the Presences that accompanied the Abidan–the Ninecloud Soul itself had been created in an ancient attempt to replicate those strange existences–but all that the Luminous Queen of six generations ago had accomplished was creating an admittedly very useful work of national sacred infrastructure, not the power-sharing personal companion and second mind that the Abidan possessed.

The Monarch of the Hungry Deep had also tried to replicate those existences, far more recently, but by all indications his efforts had fallen short of even the Ninecloud Court’s efforts.

“We confirmed it ourselves,” Neraitha said clearly. “And we’re confident that even our father would agree. A sapient construct small enough to be carried by a single sacred artist.”

Miara exchanged a glance with her uncle, before nodding back to the twins. Her skepticism was mounting, but her older (and far, far less advanced) cousins were trusted figures even in the Inner Court for a reason. “Go on.”

“The construct’s name is Dross. We’ve confirmed its sapience, and we believe it’s on a higher level of sapience than that of the Ninecloud Soul.”

Relliar’s age-weathered face was a mask of disbelief. Miara raised one of her brows, as Neraitha continued.

“Dross is owned by an unaffiliated sacred artist from Ashwind practicing a unique Path of two parts, with two different cores; one of pure madra, the other of Blackflame madra. He’s the most talented pure artist outside of the family we’ve ever seen or heard of, and his name is Wei Shi Lindon.”

Miara raised her other eyebrow. “Go on.”

“…We think he’s worthy of being brought into the Inner Court,” Junesca said, grinning. “We want to personally bring him in.”

Miara’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline.

“You can’t be serious,” uncle Relliar said. “With the prospects you two have—a wild sacred artist?”

“He fought Underlords to a standstill, uncle,” Neraitha said. “He took the lead, he was the vanguard of a team that disabled Parizad’s Overlord construct. He isn’t even a Peak Truegold. He fought us, and a Truegold Inner Court guardsman, when he was still a Lowgold, for ten entire minutes and was still standing. We were not holding back.”

Relliar’s lips had gone noticeably thinner, but his skepticism still remained, pouring off his spirit. As a Herald, this made his presence a black cloud to the spiritual senses, choking the room. To a Gold, it would have been suffocating. Her cousins clearly suffered beneath the weight of his will, but to their credit, they barely twitched.

“Worthy accomplishments in trust, though I will verify. But hardly worthy of the Inner Court,” Relliar said gravely.

“...He’s immune to Radiance madra, or near enough as to make little difference,” Junesca said hesitantly, struggling against the weight of Relliar’s presence. “As a Gold, without any external means. Just his Path and Iron Body.”

Relliar stood straighter. “Truly?”

“Personally confirmed.”

Relliar said nothing. He just stared at and past and through the twins, as if he could see through their intertwined spirits and read the cores of their very souls. 

As a Herald, facing mere Golds, there was some reality in that. 

“…If I may?” Neraitha said quietly, sweating as she struggled against the older Herald’s partially–partially–unveiled presence.

Relliar, after an additional moment of making his displeasure clear, relented on his spiritual pressure and nodded. Neraitha shakily got up from her bow and gave him a dreamcrystal - a laminated and faceted diamond gemstone the Inner Court preferred to use in place of the more primitive, but far cheaper dream tablets used the rest of the world over, or the slightly more respectable quartz dreamstones used in the rest of their own nation.

Relliar processed the dreamcrystal’s contents, and after a few moments—Heralds could process dream aspect information incomparably faster in subjective time than ordinary sacred artists—nodded, his eyes slightly wider. 

“I see,” he said.

“Do you approve?”

“…I’d be willing to personally test him,” Relliar said noncommittedly.

“Off with you, uncle,” Miara said, waving a hand lazily, teleporting him down to the city with a brief working of authority, though it dragged at her last reserves for the day. “You don’t get to be around for the girl talk,” she said, knowing that her voice would still reach him, even across the tens of miles.

“So,” Miara said, turning back to her favorite big cousins with a knifelike grin. “You two finally found someone you’re interested in, huh.”

The twins got up from their bows and scrambled up to the Luminous Throne, but Miara waved a hand lazily and teleported them all to her bedroom. Miara teleported directly into a sitting position on her bed, and with a brief working of Soulfire-controlled aura she pulled over two pink cloud pillow-chairs for her cousins to sink back into. With another working, she brought over a few plates of the ever-present hot candy and treats (one of the best perks of being Queen, no one could tell you no, ever, at least if you wanted something badly enough) and she started digging in along with her cousins.

At the back of her mind, she felt the will of her collective ancestors make a stink--in the time she spent here, relaxing, she could instead be out there saving a city or whatever–but Miara told them all to go pound sand.  

“Now then," Sha Miara’s grin widened predatorily as, for the first time in months, she could finally forget about being a Monarch for half a minute. "Tell me all about this boy you two met. Lindon, was it?”