“We were happy, or so I thought, but I was wrong, and I paid for it dearly, as did my elemental brothers and sister because one of us was far from happy.”
“Vivax,” I growl, and Liliana nods.
“Yes, our sister of death. Death brings sadness, but without it, there can be no renewal, and it’s an integral part of the circle of life, but Vivax came to resent her powers. She created life, but instead of nurturing her creations, she frightened them, and they came to fear her. Instead of changing her ways, she reveled in that fear, and her creations became more and more terrible. She started avoiding spending any time with us and always had excuses why when we asked her to. The final straw was when she created a race capable of subjugating others and feeding from their turmoil and pain. We decided to have an intervention. Although we didn’t like to interfere with one another’s creations,she had gone a little too far. That race was wicked, and I had a vision of them spreading throughout the universe, destroying everything we worked hard to create. The remaining five of us believed we could convince her to unmake them,” Liliana says wryly, and I roll my eyes and snort.
“Boy, were we delusional.”
My sister nods, her mood becoming somber. “Yes, we were, because by then, Vivax resented us immensely and had been making plans to get her revenge as she desired. She flat out refused to unmake her creations, and none of us could do it because we didn’t have a hand in creating them.”
“Revenge against what?” Lila asks, sounding confused, and I don’t blame her. We hadn’t actually done anything to Vivax, but in her paranoia and impending madness, she believed she was a victim. Even though we were not responsible for her creation or her powers, she decided to hold it against us.
Liliana shrugs her shoulders. “Something she supposed we had done to her. She blamed us for her having death magic, which is ridiculous since none of us know where or how we came to be, we just were, but she claims we stole all the ‘good magic.’” Liliana makes quotation marks with her fingers.
I huffed at the sheer ridiculousness of her accusations then just as I do now. She was like a small child having a temper tantrum when we confronted her, but little did we know, she had spent some of the time she was avoiding us crafting a plan that blindsided us all.
“We appealed to our creators, praying day and night for some guidance, and Sanshia
was gifted a vision that said if we combined our powers, we could unmake that race. So that’s what we did, but it backfired on us. When we went to the planet to unmake it and its creations, Vivax was waiting. She stood aside without an argument, and that’s when I should have known it was a trick,but we thought our sister was finally coming to her senses. When we started channeling our power into the core of the planet, Vivax redirected our powers into a crystal that none of us had ever seen before. It was capable of absorbing and storing power, and we could feel it stealing everything from us—not just draining us, but actually stealing it completely.”
Lila is listening with rapt attention, and her mouth rounds in awe as Liliana continues her story.
“When Lilessa realized what was happening, she was able to cut us four elementals off and banish us, sending us far away from the planet, her power always being slightly greater than ours as the goddess of life,” I chime in, remembering finding myself flying through the vast expanse of space, confused and alone. “When I finally came to my senses and returned to the planet, I couldn’t find her or Vivax. There was a huge crater a mile wide where we had stood. When my brothers and sister also returned, we searched for days, but there was no sign of either of them.”
Lilessa nods, and a tear trickles down her cheek, but I don’t even think she notices because she’s so wrapped up in remembering what happened. Lila reaches for her hand again and gives it a squeeze.
“What happened?” she prompts, and Liliana startles before wiping away that tear.
“When I managed to release the others from the pull of the crystal, I cast a spell to entrap Vivax in her own treachery, hoping if she was trapped as well, then she would end it, and all of our power would return to us, but that isn’t what happened. Once she was ensnared, she was drained as well. I was horrified. Both of us were going to die, completely drained of our power.”
Lila gasps, her eyes wide as she leans forward ever so slightly, completely absorbed in the tale.
“Vivax fought, but it was too late. I knew we would reincarnate, but I had to ensure that the orb now full of our power didn’t fall into the hands of the same race that we were trying to destroy, because that would have been a disaster. I summoned the most enlightened race I created, the Una’s. They had the ability to become vapor and travel through space at great speeds. I entrusted them with the protection of the orb, making them promise to share the power that the crystal now contained with the universe, and I was confident they would. Their core makeup didn’t contain avarice or lust for power. Vivax fought the whole time, going so far as to attack me with all her remaining death power, but our powers were never meant to be used against one another, and it was the final death blow. It backfired, and she exploded, the blast taking me with it because I had lost all of my own power and was incapable of shielding.”
“But wouldn’t the Una’s have been destroyed as well?” Lila asks. She shakes her head.
“No, because they were able to travel as vapor, so they were unaffected by the destructive blast. I’m assuming they retrieved the orb once the crater we created cleared.”
“Why didn’t the orb get destroyed as well?” my mate asks, and I can tell she is dying to ask more questions and is barely restraining herself.
“Because it contained the full power of the goddesses of life and death as well as half the power of the four elemental gods. It is indestructible, which is why it had to be guarded.”
“That’s why the Una’s couldn’t destroy it and had to pass its care on to the Adams family at the end of the war when their race was decimated,” I add, and Lilessa nods.
“Yes. The war was a miscalculation on my behalf. I had no idea that would happen, and my heart weeps for the Una’s. Maybe once I have my power back, I can help repopulate their planet. They were a favorite creation of mine, so gentleand unassuming, and it’s why they ended up decimated—they weren’t built for war.”
“So what happened to you? Did you reincarnate? How did you come to be my grandmother?” Lila stands up and paces across the carpet, all of her questions bubbling to the surface. I get up to soothe her, but Lilessa waves me down and watches her granddaughter pace. “Is Vivian actually Vivax?” She spins around, her hand on her hips, and I can’t stand it anymore, so I reach out and drag her into my lap, nuzzling at her neck to calm her with my touch. She sighs and sinks into me, and I feel smug satisfaction. Despite our one-sided bond, I can still help balance her emotions.
My sister beams at the two of us. “You two are so cute,” she murmurs before the joy in her eyes fades and she answers Lila’s question.
“Yes, Vivian is Vivax, and she is the person who trapped me in that box.” She pauses and reaches for a glass of water on the side table. Lila jumps up and passes it to her, and Liliana takes a sip through the straw. I can tell she’s starting to struggle, but I know she’s determined to tell Lila everything, so I keep my mouth shut. Lila doesn’t sit back down, instead wandering around the room. Her nervous energy would be endearing if the situation wasn’t so serious. Eventually, she just leans against the wall and focuses on Liliana again.
“This was not the first time we died during our existence. All of us have a time or two,” she tells Lila, and I chuckle. During times of boredom, we often dared each other to do crazy things, knowing we would always reincarnate. “But it was the first time that we didn’t have any knowledge of our former lives when we reincarnated, and we were babies instead of fully formed beings like in the past. Vivian and I were born as twins to a Skarrian family, and neither of us retained any of our former knowledge. Fate must have played a hand in my life though. Your grandpascourted me, and we mated, and until I was captured and tortured, I didn’t know any different.”
“But Vivian did?” Lila asks, and Liliana shakes her head.
“Not to start with, I don’t think. We were never super close, since she always considered me competition. She wanted the Adams brothers for herself, and when they started courting me, she became jealous, and we grew even further apart. But then she met her mates, and I thought she had gotten over her issues. We spent time together with our families. We were both pregnant, me with Marcus and her with Mitchell, Fiona and Phillip’s father. Things were good, but as the boys grew up, we saw less and less of them. We were, of course, traveling with the circus, and when we were back on Skarr, we saw Mitchell and his fathers, but Vivian was always busy. She was sitting on the Skarrian council in our family seat. Technically, it was my seat, as I am the oldest, but with my commitments to the circus, it was easy enough to let her take it. It made her less resentful as well, or so I hoped, and to start with, it worked, but she kept asking me weird questions—questions I didn’t think anything of because they never really made sense at the time. Every time I returned to Skarr, she asked if I had new powers or remembered anything from our past, wanting to know if the circus was a front for something else.”
“She remembered?” Lila slides down the wall and pulls her legs up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin on her knees.
