The sobs suddenly stopped, and the only response coming from inside was, “Fuck.” After, only absolute silence followed, irrevocable proof of a Given sound barrier by the owner of the huge grief and pain inside.
Worry beyond measure was increasingly speeding through Hope’s veins, tightening her blood vessels.
It was not a worry about Lenna not being able to fulfill the role of First Feather, helping Hope rule the nation, as she had promised. Cardinals, they were so far from that. Hope didn’t even have a throne to rule, and the nation was invaded by an army of flying creatures. Lenna was so far from that. The most worrying part was that instead of asking for help or company, she seemed to distance herself from everyone and everything, not letting them get closer to her pain.
As she assumed her failure and Lenna’s refusal to have anyone with her on perhaps the worst night of her life, Hope’s steps restarted, pacing slowly towards the suite. She walked through the doors that led to the patio and spotted white hair amongst nature. Stevian was kneeling on the floor, his hands in semi-circles as his lips moved while he prayed to his god and to the moon above him, shadows leaving his hands and trailing towards the night sky. The stars in the sky seemed to shine especially brightly tonight.
Down the corridor, warm dim light came from a half-open door, the sound of crystal and metal clattering filling that side of the house. Hope popped her head in.
“Late night experiments, Indianna?” she asked.
Her fringe and black bob swung as the scientific mastermind turned to look at Hope, two crystal vials in hand. One was longand narrow, with bubbling orange liquid filling it to the rim, the other was wide and shorter, with a mix of powders and dried petals sitting steadily. Her dark eyes were red and swollen.
“Hi, Hope,” she greeted. “I can’t sleep.”
“Me either. What are you doing?” Hope asked. “I like the powder thing with the petals.”
Indianna left the vial with the bubbling liquid in a placeholder and lifted the powder vial until it was in front of her narrowed eyes, a magnifying glass in her other hand as she scrutinized its contents carefully.
“I am just playing with a few ingredients, really, seeing how they interact and tolerate each other.” She sighed. “Sasha loved when I added dried petals to my—potions, she called them—and Brendon always laughed when I used powders, saying I was just getting sand from the beach and spending my paid time building sandcastles like a child.”
Hope smiled, her eyes tearing up again, and they walked towards each other until they fused in a tight hug. “We will always remember them,” Hope said.
“They deserved a better death than that. They were good people,” Indianna said.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
After a while of admiring Indianna using tools and techniques Hope had never seen before, she waved and resumed her walk to the Badassery Suite.
The next sound that made Hope stop came from the room Ayla and Nina shared. The sounds weren’t pleasant, they were unclear, muffled sounds, as if someone was fighting unconscious.
“I am here, Nina,” Ayla was whispering. “I am with you.”
Was the only person who had managed to fall asleep having nightmares?
“I’ve got you, Nina. You are safe,” Ayla kept repeating softly while Nina’s sounds continued.
10
Hope
Hope finally reached the Badassery Suite, and it was, indeed, a mess. Piles of dirty weapons and clothes sat in different places. They had all dumped everything in this room after showering the dry blood and pieces of dead flesh of the sangins from their bodies. The weapons, however, were her sole responsibility, since the others preferred the use of panom magic and shadows.
Opening her hand, she Gave a white stone table in front of her. One by one, she picked her daggers from the floor and lined them up on the table from longest to shortest. She usually kept the shorter ones on the belt around her waist. The longerones, on the belts around her thighs and across her chest and shoulders.
Finally, she removed the red and black crystal blades from her body. The Red and Black Lawful Stabs, fruit of the blood of the Cardinals and the Cardinal Queen themselves, and placed them somewhere around the longer end of the collection. As always, the blades pulsed slightly, their powerful magic begging Hope to wield them for Harming or killing. She didn’t trust those blades.
She cleaned each blade meticulously, then sharpened the edges of the metal weapons until they could make someone bleed by mere contact, polished the handles before finally returning each one to the sheath they belonged to. When that was in order and the Black and Red stabs were tucked in closely to her body again, she looked around.
Closing her hand, she Took some piles of clothes, making them vanish. Most panoms had to use their four powers evenly to keep their inner scale intact and avoid unwanted symptoms. If they Took, they had to Give, maintaining the vertical balance of the opposite magics from the South and North Petals of their panom mark. If they Healed, they had to Harm, to keep the horizontal scale even with the use of magics from the West and East Petals. If they didn’t, there were consequences.
Lenna became dizzy and couldn’t focus when her magic balance was uneven. Ciaran used to become extremely cold, however, that would never happen again, since he gave up his panom magic for her. Ayla used to have extreme pain in her eyes, to the point she couldn’t see, and that wouldn’t happen again either, since her eyeballs were now in the North Cardinal’s necklace. Jake felt extreme pain, however, his pain tolerance was something out of this world, hence why the East Cardinal had claimed him as the Ruler of her Harming Petal.
Hope, however, didn’t feel her inner balance tilting to either side as she used the different powers. She couldn’t feel anythingbecause, for some reason she still lacked to understand, she simply didn’t have a balance.
Perhaps it was because she was the Ruler of the Core of Thyria, the central and pivotal circle that held the four Petals connected, like her magic was the balance of magics.
What she felt, though, permanently beating with pride against the Cardinal-red panom mark at the back of her neck, was the Fifth Power. The power she still hadn’t used since she had obtained it in the Fifth Judgment, and she didn’t know how to use. Or perhaps she would know when the time came? Using her four panom powers had come to her as naturally as breathing. Would the Fifth Power be the same? Had Jake and Ayla explored the use of their Fifth Powers yet?
