Chapter 10: The Domain of the Queen of Darkness

Reese, the immortal servant of the Queen of Water, and the Flame Keeper Claire, were both in agreement that Ingrid's airshow in the Domain of Metal was doomed to fail so long as Titania was corrupted. However, with Titania purified, an inspirational airshow would likely be enough to provoke Titania's small trickle of divine power to activate. An airshow over the floating island closest to Ashe's prison would likely be sufficient to break the seals and free the Queen of Darkness.

The question arose as to what would happen with the contract crystals.

"Once the Queen of Darkness is freed," the emperor said, "every nation in the world is going to declare war on the Heylin Empire."

The emperor's lodge was empty. All the servants had been sent away and Vaska used a wind elemental to create a barrier preventing any sound from escaping the room. It was very quiet except when someone was talking.

"Can you trust the banks?" Claire asked.

"The probability that the banks will betray me is very small," the emperor said. "However, the consequences would be catastrophic. There would not be a Heylin Empire if we make a mistake here. And Taisia will suffer an even worse fate."

Ingrid felt an uncanny sense of dread from that statement.

"The nation of Ayaru is an abomination," Claire said. "It was foolish to let a hostile diaspora fester so close to a vulnerable ethnic group like the Taisians. This is the work of the Queen of Life. You either defend your territory or you will be replaced by people who do so."

"Let's try to stay focused. We need a method of guaranteeing that the banks cannot reclaim the crystals that are actively being used by my armies."

"You could have Titania claim the crystals," Reese said.

"How far away can she claim crystals?"

"A few hundred feet at most," Vaska said.

"Then we would need to gather all the crystals in one place," the emperor said.

"Then you best get to work on that," Claire said.

In the days that followed, six airships from the Central Army Air Force and two from the Taisian Air Navy were spaced out across the ocean and the Heylin Empire. Each one was fully-loaded with huge varicolored vats of contract crystals.

Ingrid and Vaska flew in the number one jet and they were accompanied by the remaining five White Ravens. The HY-10 Showstopper fighter jets looked sleek and beautiful even though they were armed with a full complement of missiles in the weapon bays. The White Ravens took off from the runway at House Varelion at dawn and thus began the long airship-hopping journey to the city of Heyl. They navigated with the help of a rare ocular demon which had been taken away from an Eagle Eye for Vaska's use.

They flew out over the vast ocean and for the first time in Ingrid's life she could not see the land. Just an endless sapphire sphere with the Gray Baby on the horizon, as if guiding them. They found the first airship out over the water and when they landed Ingrid used Titania to claim the crystals. They rested and then they went on.

Soon they crossed over the islands north of the heartland. Tall, isolated things, surrounded by cliffs a thousand feet high and spotted with bird's nests, the gentle lawns glowing green in the summer air. They continued south along a great arc from airship to airship, claiming the crystals as they went. The land turned to desert in the rain shadow of a great range of snowclad peaks, then it went on through a vast unbroken forest, and finally over the lake trapped behind a dam which had been crafted using stone elementals in ancient days. Beyond the dam there were river floodplains winding laterally across the land for hours. The last of the airships was stationed over the city of Heyl itself.

It was a nice city. Very tasteful and artistic. The buildings all shared a similar architecture and the city had grown to fill every single nook and cranny of the spider-like lowlands between the gently rolling hills. Landed elites had constructed vast vineyards and manor houses up in the highlands. The Imperial Palace occupied a great deal of the center of the city, an elegant building with towers crowned with shining onion domes of two-color swirls: red and blue, turquoise and umber, silver and pale yellow, green and indigo, gold and black. All the colors associated the bisected divine powers and the elementals.

They landed on the deck of the final airship from the Central Army Air Force not far from the Imperial Palace. Vaska used her cherry orb to contact the emperor for one final confirmation before they went off again. They flew right over the Imperial Palace and Vaska said, "Erika! Open a portal to the Domain of Darkness!"

The portal began to form behind them as they flew. Ingrid banked and the whole delta formation banked with her. Then they began a long circle around the city which brought them back facing the open portal. A bird's nest of black worms writhing along the ring. Another sky within.

They passed through the portal.

The sky overhead was an inverted ocean of roiling clouds, the troughs black and dark gray, the crests washed-out red and blue lights shining from some place beyond. Ahead the horizon below the clouds was a thin meridian of dusky purple. Below the ground was bone-white and cracked with jagged plateaus and huge obsidian chasms and twisting trees and ugly mushrooms spewing plumes of gray spores over the whole affair. There were rivers and lakes not of water but of blood, dark and gross where it was stagnant and flowing rusty pink in the rapids.

The floating island in the sky had a shape that vaguely resembled a battleship, wide in the middle and narrow at the tips with a slight upward tilt at one end. Far below the "natural" landscape had been completely supplanted by a vast stepwell of polished black marble. Rivers of blood flowed into the stepwell and they fell from tier to tier in rusty waterfalls of blood. The prison was floating above the lake of blood in the middle of the stepwell. A vast sphere of pure darkness which distorted the surrounding light.

"That's the Queen's prison!" Vaska said. "Father was right. The Queen was sealed away in the city of Heyl. Why is she here? What did my ancestors do?"

Ingrid knew less about it than Vaska did, and Titania remained silent, either out of ignorance or out of shame. Ingrid suspected the latter.

The White Ravens flew low over the island to announce their arrival. When they looped back around Ingrid could see masked people pouring into the streets. There were even some shadow hunters and some ocular elementals.

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"Diamond clear," Ingrid said. "Smoke on!"

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Zakx stalked the rooftops in silence, trying to avoid the watchful gaze of the elders. Those who had trained themselves to travel to the mind of the Goddess of Wishes where they could replenish their spiritual energy. The most experienced elders only needed to sleep five hours a day. But many of them were not burdened the way Zakx was burdened. He had slept for thirty-six hours straight and the women with the pure white masks rolled his body and they bathed him and they carried out his slop. He had gone to the Goddess of Wishes but he didn't remember what he did there. He never did.

The shadow hunters could smell him but he had an agreement with them. They would not warn the elders of his movements. It was not normal on this day for him to go as he did, but he felt something had changed. Never before had he left the Goddess of Wishes with this feeling, even if it was just a distant dream that had been lost to him upon awakening. But he was determined.

He gathered his friends. Then they caught one of the elders unaware and Zakx summoned his ocular elemental. The man was not able to stand against Zakx and his friends with just one pair of shadow hunters. They beat the old man senseless and they carried his body into a nearby dwelling. They hung him upside down from the ceiling over the hearth and they lit the fire and when he stirred they beat him again. Soon the flesh on his face was boiling and popping and the contents of his brain were ejected through his nostrils as clouds of pink mist. Normally the shadow hunters would have gone berserk after their master died but they were wise enough to know they could not stand against an ocular demon. And who could?

"Mother Ashe!" Zakx cried. "I offer the evil of this deed to you!"

"Mother Ashe!" his friends chanted. "Bless us! Bless us!"

Something roared over the city with an astonishing hiss, somewhere between a deluge of water and the crackle of an open flame and the breath passing through the gap between a person's two front teeth. Glass windows shook. Certainly a vision of Ashe, for nothing else could command such power and presence.

"Ashe has accepted our sacrifice!" Zakx proclaimed.

"We are blessed!"

They went outside. People were pouring out of their dwellings into the streets and soon Zakx and his friends found themselves mired in the dense crowd. "Did you see it?" people asked. "See what?" others asked. Zakx and his friends shoved their way through to an alley and they braced their hands against the stone walls and they climbed up onto the roof to look out over the Domain of Queen Ashe.

Then they saw it.

Out on the horizon there was a window into another sky, framed by a ring of roiling darkness. The sky beyond the window was bright and blue and filled with wispy white clouds. One of his friends saw motion and Zakx looked that way. There were four white arrowheads shining in the sky, arranged in a diamond. Lazily they raced along the horizon in an unimaginable arc. Then they changed shape and slowly they began to grow larger. Zakx realized that the objects had reoriented themselves and they were coming straight at him.

He could hear them and it was the roaring sound from before. They raced directly overhead and Zakx could see them clearly. Some type of machine made of metal. A ship capable of sailing the transparent seas of Ashe's sky. They left long plumes of white smoke as they went and soon the sky was filled with the evidence of their paths. There were little glass shields on top and there were people inside. The lead ship had two people and the others each had just one. On the rear the ships each had a tall fin like Zakx had once seen on an uncooked fish.

While they were distracted two more of the white ships roared by overhead, just barely avoiding a head-on collision. Zakx and his friends celebrated the misdirection which led to the surprise and the deception of the angles. Misdirection and deception. Certainly those things are blessed by Ashe.

But the people on the streets were not celebrating the deceptions. They were celebrating all the wrong things. They were reveling in the novel sights. Zakx could tell. They were becoming inspired. Inspiration was the work of the Queen of Light and true worshippers of Ashe must avoid being inspired. But was that a contradiction? Who could have such power except Ashe? Perhaps the Queen of Light had invaded the Domain of Ashe?

Indeed, far away the leading ship began to glow. A blinding pale copper-gold light illuminating the base of the clouds and the landscape far below. The light was so bright that the shadow hunters in the street fled. Even his ocular demon vanished to escape the blinding radiance. Zakx closed his eyes and he held one arm over his face and yet he could still see the dull red of the blood vessels on his eyelids.

There was a sickening crack that seemed to shake the whole horizon. Far below, along the white-black landscape under the island, along the distant rivers and lakes of blood, a tide of shadows raced out and consumed the landscape. Misty and grasping. It seemed to linger in vague clouds, slowly boiling even as it was replenished. Zakx looked in other directions and he got the impression that the source of the shadows was directly below the center of the island, that place which was impossible to see.

People in the streets started screaming and Zakx darted along the roofs to investigate. People were fleeing away from something in the center of the city but when Zakx saw what it was he sprinted toward it eagerly. Even his friends abandoned him. He jumped off the roof onto the empty town square and he threw itself prostrate on the ground at her feet.

"Oh great Mother Ashe!" he said. "Did you hear our prayers? Did you accept our sacrifice?"

Ashe looked at him. Something was horribly wrong. She was just a child. Her face contorted into a pout. She watched the ships roaring overhead, glowing with that painful light, and she said, "Titania, you idiot! You can't fly through my sky!" Then she vanished in an explosion of shadows, leaving Zakx alone and prostrate on the cobblestones where her feet had been.

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The sky filled with Titania's light as they flew, illuminating the city built atop the floating island.

"Now!" Vaska cried.

Ingrid pulled the nose around to face the black sphere under the island and she flew close. It was so dark that it seemed to absorb Titania's light.

"I am touching the divine power," Titania said.

"Free her!" Ingrid said.

"You have the freedom to demand this. The divine power is pleased."

Cracks of light began to spread across the sphere, and soon the dark parts began to shrink in a stained-glass window of black glass mortared with gold. Finally the sphere popped with a cascade of liquid shadows that poured down into the stepwell. Even that vast space was quickly overflowing with the shadow and it began to flood out over the landscape. Ingrid pulled up toward the island.

"The mission is successful," Vaska said.

"We'll continue the airshow. White Ravens! Diamond burst!"

They performed two more maneuvers as the landscape below was slowly coated in that layer of shadowy clouds. Titania continued to glow as the airshow was still inspiring the masked people down on the floating island. As Ingrid was flying away after the maneuver the cabin of her fighter jet suddenly grew very dark. A fountain of liquid shadow exploded above her instrument panel and at first she thought Erika had manifested herself. But it was not Erika.

She was small, about the size of a kitten, and even at that small scale Ingrid could tell she was just a child. She wore a white dress decorated with black and red and purple diamonds in an imperfect pattern and she had four wings like a butterfly also decorated with the same colors and patterns. Just like Erika, she had raven-black hair, but it was of a more reasonable length. Finally, she wore a mask that obscured half her face, crafted from the skull of some horned beast, and her one visible eye shined an uncanny gold color.

The tiny child pouted.

"What the hell did you meat puppets do to me?" she asked.

"Are you Ashe?" Ingrid asked.

"That's right," Ashe said. "You didn't answer my question!"

"We didn't do anything to you," Vaska said. "That was our ancestors. They died a thousand years ago."

"Oh right, you bone cages carry around a bunch of dysfunctional organs. You must be very young then. But you're avoiding my question. What did your ancestors do to me?"

"I think they used Titania's power to seal you away," Vaska said.

"Titania you idiot!" Ashe said.

"I'm sorry," Titania said. "They spent twenty years indoctrinating a little boy to believe that sealing you was the best possible fortune. Then they had the boy inspire others and then..."

"A serious flaw in the divine power. I'll admit we hadn't thought of that possibility. Wait, it's not just me. What the hell did you do to my sister-self?"

"About that..."

"That's Erika's fault!" Titania said.

"Excuses!" Ashe said.

"We are trying to make it better," Ingrid said. "We are trying to fix what our ancestors did. The emperor says we need your help."

"Well, I'm coming with you either way," Ashe said. "Take me to this emperor of yours. And make Titania stop!"

"White Ravens! That will be our final maneuver."

Titania's light didn't fade until after they passed through the portal. Once on the other side they approached the Central Army Air Force flagship and they were cleared to land. There was a great deal of activity on the deck and indeed throughout the city. The imperial marines were swarming through the skies in tilt-rotors and there was some type of army moving through the city.

"So much fear!" Ashe said. "So much betrayal. I love it!"

"What's happening?" Ingrid asked.

"I'm sorry," Vaska said. "My father commanded me not to talk about it."

"You said you can't lie!"

"I can't break a promise to my father either!"

Vaska did not need to break her promise. Glenice and Algot Gunn were on the deck of the flagship waiting for them. Marines in black jackets were swarming the deck and there were at least three tilt-rotors taking off at the far end. Formations of hundreds of fighter jets patrolled the skies and there was even a squadron of bombers flying in formation through the center of the city.

"We're sorry we kept this from you," Glenice said. "We know you have a kind heart, Ingrid."

"What's happening?" she asked again.

"The liquidation of the landed elite, the intelligentsia, the bankers, the stock traders, the property developers. Basically everyone in the entire empire with any financial interest in the banks is being executed by the military."

"That's terrible!"

Ashe began laughing maniacally.

"Is that her?" Glenice asked.

Ingrid nodded.

Ashe grew to the size of a normal child. Then she started dancing.