“Ximena! What is wrong with you? Your hair is a mess, and your gown is covered in soil and yellow liquid! Girls are made to be pretty, not sword-fight or take samples of maggot blood!” screeched Aunt Lillian, whose pudgy face was dotted with makeup. Aunt Lillian had long strings of real pearls around her neck, with her hair in a messy bun, yet her long pink ballgown in perfect condition. 

“Speak for yourself. Besides, I don’t sword-fight, and this is not maggot blood. It is maggot saliva and urine mixed with fresh soil from where the maggots were eating the cornstalks. I’m trying to be helpful and formulate a way to save the garden and drive away maggots, not prance around and be pretty like every other dumb ‘good girl’!” Ximena argued, tears springing to her eyes.

“You can’t even keep a brown dress from looking dirty! Goodness me, you have brown slime in your hair! What is this disgusting stuff?” Aunt Lillian said angrily, wiping her hands on a tissue. 

“Maggot deterrent. It clearly works,” Ximena smirked as Aunt Lillian nattered on about pride and respect while dressing Ximena in a dress to match her sister’s, only with a blue floral pattern instead of a pink one. When Ximena finally emerged from the room, she looked gorgeous for once, with her long black hair swinging behind her in a neat braid. 

“Now try and stay like that until Aunt Astrid comes in half an hour!” called Aunt Lillian, who was furiously swatting at her white satin gloves from within her pristine white chamber.

Amalthea and Ximena burst out into laughter as soon as they left the room, and even though Amalthea was absolutely positive she wasn’t supposed to laugh about the maggot deterrent that Ximena had made, she didn’t really care. 

Ximena barely looked up from her book when Aunt Astrid knocked on the door to the large white manor. Mama was still buried in her Shakespearian poetry, only she was upstairs, and Ximena in her scientific theories and chemical processes. Amalthea, however, had been quietly sipping tea in a white armchair, waiting for her Aunt to arrive for dinner and retrieve Lillian. 

Amalthea leapt out of her seat as soon as she heard the knock, and opened the door for Aunt Astrid. 

“Hello, Aunt Astrid!” Amalthea said cheerfully as her aunt entered the room. 

Aunt Astrid was a tall, imposing woman with long, dark hair that was tied up in a bun behind her head. Her lips were thin and tight, and she was wearing a purple velvet dress with an extremely high neck. 

“Fetch Margaret, child,” said Aunt Astrid sternly as she pointed her umbrella at Amalthea. 

“Mama is reading, Aunt Astrid. She doesn’t like to be disturbed,” said Amalthea, looking down at her pink dress shoes. 

“For goodness sakes, girl, women do not read,” scoffed Aunt Astrid as she snatched Ximena’s book out of her hand and placed it on the table. Ximena gave Aunt Astrid a very angry look and stormed out of the room. 

“Now then, Amalthea, fetch me your mother. Right now, do you understand?” Aunt Astrid gritted her teeth as she spoke. Amalthea nodded and scurried off towards Mama’s room. She heard a sad laugh from the room, and saw Mama looking at a book longingly. 

“Come back to me, my darling, come back to me…” she whispered, her eyes in a distant and faraway place. She was caressing a snow-white page, over and over, circling one word. Amalthea caught flashes of an H, an N, a V, an R...

“Mama?”  Amalthea asked quietly as she slipped into the room.  

“Oh! Amalthea, why are you here? Has Astrid come already? She was always my least favourite sister, well, I suppose she was tied with Lillian. At least she’s picking the old bat up from our house, though it’s a shame she has to stay for dinner.” Rambled Mama as she followed Amalthea down the stairs. 

By the time that Amalthea and Mama got downstairs, Aunt Lillian was already chatting with Aunt Astrid while trying to “delicately” eat the tea cakes that were set out on the table. 

Ximena had returned to the room and resumed reading from the book that Aunt Astrid had snatched from her (when Amalthea got a look at the cover, she realized it was not science and actually Medicinal Antidotes I, by some doctor named C.L. Main) 

 Aunt Astrid looked crossly at Mama when she entered the room with a book in her hand. Amalthea assumed that she had finished the Shakespeare, as she was reading from a book titled Advadia Nephage, The Story Of Twenty-Four Worlds. 

Ximena nearly jumped out of her seat when she saw what Mama was reading. 

“You’re reading Advadia, Mama? You used to read that book to me when I was little, and you said my father was a lot like Prince Hanaver.” said Ximena, a small smile on her face. 

“I did say that, yes, but…” smiled Mama before Aunt Astrid swept the book out of her hands. 

“No more reading, Margaret, you know how impolite it is to read when guests are here, even though it is Advadia.” Scowled Aunt Astrid. Mama cowered from her stern words, and Amalthea could see many more grey streaks in her hair than was appropriate for a woman of forty years of age. 

“Why does it make any difference if it’s Advadia, Aunt Astrid?” asked Amalthea, her eyes wide. 

“Your mama’ll tell you when you’re ready, children. Perhaps your Grandmama can tell you the story tomorrow, when you go over to your Aunt Charlotta’s for Easter dinner,” said Aunt Astrid softly as Mama placed Advadia gingerly on the long, pine wood dining room table.

“What story, Advadia? I’ve heard that too many times,” Ximena groaned.

“Enough chitter-chatter, Margie, have you made dinner yet?” asked Aunt Lillian, turning to Mama, her face coated in crumbs. 

“No, not yet… Amalthea, can you please tend to the vegetables and the chicken?” asked Mama, and Amalthea could almost imagine her bending over to pick up her scattered thoughts from the floor. 

Amalthea nodded and ran off, before calling over her shoulder “What recipe, Mama?” 

“Anything you like, dear,” said Mama, smiling. 

Even as she cooked, Amalthea could still hear Aunt Lillian whisper to Aunt Astrid “If she’s always reading, why can’t she learn how to read a cookbook?” and Aunt Astrid’s snicker as the night continued on. 

The next evening, Aunt Charlotta welcomed Amalthea and Ximena into her house curtly, before promptly slamming the door in Mama’s face. Grandmama was sitting with Henri by the fire, and had just started telling the story. 

“Yes, yes, Henri, that was her name, just like your aunt, but it doesn’t matter now, because in the story, they call her June, and that’s what we’ll call her.” 

Amalthea and Ximena quietly took their seats as Grandmama continued the story, the smell of Easter dinner cooking in the kitchen wafting to their noses. 

“June had three sisters, Ana, Catherine, and Charity, and they lived in a small village with their mother and their father. June loved to read, unlike her sisters. One day, however, she got a book called Advadia Nephage for her birthday. She loved it so much that she got stuck in it for a very long time. In fact, she spent a year living in each kingdom in Advadia. Her first year, she spent with the humans, in the High Kingdom, where Princess Camellia of the Fifth Colony was destined to marry Prince Hanaver of the First, and most noble, Colony. However, June changed the course of the story by falling in love with Hanaver and giving birth to two children named Helen and Amelia inside the book. Princess Camellia was turned aside for the mysterious June. However, out of anger that the new Princess was not of noble blood, the King threw her out of the kingdom. She then traveled with a heavy heart through the next twenty-three worlds, meeting many magical mermaids, elves, and sorcerers.”

“Did she get to meet any fairies?” asked Amalthea, her eyes glittering.

“Pixies, dear, pixies, and I’m afraid she did.”

Before Amalthea could protest, Henri asked, “And what about pirates?”

“Oh, my dear boy, there was a whole cove full of them, with their oaken ships and brightly coloured clothing.”

“Unicorns?” 

“Giants?”

“Yes, yes, children. In fact, the world of Advadia Nephage is a place of the imagination. The citizens of all twenty-four realms vary depending on how you see them.”

“Cool! So, this Prince Hanaver could have multicoloured skin?” asked Henri, his knees jiggling.

“Henri!” cried Aunt Charlotta, reaching out and smacking him on the wrist.

“There was something else that you told me, Grandmama… What was it?” Henri asked.

“Not here. Not now. Maybe later, dear.”

Aunt Charlotta let out a shriek. 

“What is it now, Charlo-”

Grandmama stopped mid-sentence when she noticed flames licking up the living room wall. 

“The Easter dinner!” shrieked Charlotta, “It caught on fire, and- and- the house!”

Hurriedly, Aunt Charlotta beckoned the children to the doorway, and Henri quickly rushed to the open door. Mama, outside, was looking around, bewildered, while Charlotta herded her away. 

“Come, Margaret, there’s a fire! We’re going to need to borrow your wagon to get out of here, hurry, hurry!”

“Where are my girls?” called Margaret hurriedly, “Amalthea! Ximena!”

Charlotta grabbed her sister’s wrist and pulled her in the wagon, still screaming.

Meanwhile, Ximena was trying to help Grandmama to her feet before she felt electric pain erupting down her spine. She screamed, and Amalthea rushed to her side, grabbing her wrist.

“Ximena!” she cried, pulling her sister towards the door while reaching for Grandmama’s hand at the same time. 

The world began to spin, and a book fell from Grandmama’s pocket. It wasn’t the familiar white cover of Aellea’s story, but it didn’t have any words on its front, only a golden symbol of an eye pierced by a sword.

The world began to whirl as the book began to engulf everything, and Amalthea tried to grab Grandmama, but made only the slightest brush against cold skin before the book took over everything and the fiery house was gone.

The first thing that Amalthea smelled were sweet flowers. She and Ximena were lying on a bed of grass in front of a small village of quaint cottages with clay walls and thatched roofs. Her Easter dress was singed around the edges, and had a grass stain from where she had landed on the ground. Ximena took no notice of the state of her dress, which was also covered in yellow goop, and leaped up from the ground. A young girl with violet-coloured eyes was eyeing them suspiciously from inside the ring of houses, but whenever Ximena started to approach her, she backed up, holding her shaking hands in front of her body. Cautiously, Amalthea pulled herself up from the ground and shook the sleep from her eyes.

“Ximena, where are we?” She asked quietly.

“If Grandmama’s story is true, then I know exactly where we are. The question is, when…” Ximena muttered.

Just then, a trumpet sounded, played by a man who was strutting around the square.

“Make way for the King of the Mages, Lord Naver!” Said the man in a bright, sunny tone.

Ximena’s eyes widened. 

“Yes, we are where I think we are, and…” 

She gasped.

“Amalthea, we’re at the end of the book!” 

Amalthea looked bewildered.

“So where are we, exactly?”

Ximena beamed.

“We’re inside Advadia Nephage!”

Amalthea stared at her, her jaw hanging.

The girl with the stunning violet eyes scurried away from them, retreating into the shadows. 

“Viole!” said Ximena. 

Amalthea stared at her quizzically.

“Viole?”

“Viole Lindlach. Born with magic in the Land of the Mages.”

“If she was born in the ‘Land of Mages’ or whatever, why wouldn’t she have magic?”

Ximena could tell by Amalthea’s tone that she didn’t believe a word of it.

“Mages are supposed to be male.”

Amalthea rolled her eyes at Ximena, which she hadn’t done in a very long time. It felt good to be naughty for once.

“I’m going home,” she huffed, stalking off, “And I’m sure we’re just in some village near Aunt Charlotta’s house that’s putting on a play about this ‘Nature’ or whoever.”

“Naver,” said Ximena, who was following her sister and getting more cross by the second, “And the only story he exists in is Advadia.”

“Then they turned Advadia into a play! They’re peasants, Ximena! Who knows what they-”

Amalthea yelped and leapt back, trying to protect the remains of her dress as a huge fireball fell between her and Ximena. In the distance, Viole squeaked like a mouse and ran off between the huts, her hands smouldering.

Amalthea’s eyes were as wide as the fireball, and her mouth hung open.

“Now do you believe me?” said an overly smug Ximena, stalking back in the direction of the houses.

Amalthea, still shellshocked, trailed behind her sister like a ruined train to an even more ruined bridal gown as they strode toward the edge of the village.

They found Viole at the edge of the crowd, her hands glowing purple. 

“Hold up your hands, my fine mages, and let us see who my heir shall be!” Naver announced.

Fifty pairs of grimy hands shot up in the air.

“I know this scene!” whispered Ximena excitedly, “The tradition of the Mages is to crown their heir by seeing whose hands glow purple when the Crowning Spell is cast, and-”

Amalthea nudged her.

“Just listen. We don’t want to stick out.”

Lord Naver, a tall man with long brown hair standing in front of the crowd, frowned.

“This is a rare occasion indeed… My dear young boys! Show me your palms!”

Naver’s brow creased when all of their hands turned up blank.

“Girls?” He asked, his voice cracking.

Ximena nudged Amalthea, and they raised their arms.

Naver scanned the crowd, a sea of pink palms..

“Women, show me your hands.”

When Viole stuck her glowing purple palms in the sky, Naver’s eyes widened.

“What is your name?”

Viole hid behind Ximena.

“What happens next?” hissed Amalthea, nudging her sister.

Ximena frowned, and then whispered in her sister’s ear.

“Viole wasn’t supposed to have anyone to hide behind. I don’t know what to do.”

Amalthea stared at Ximena.

“Well, then, think of something! You’re the smart one!”

Ximena, wanting to be kind and respect Viole’s wishes, lifted up her skirt and ripped off a piece of purple tulle that looked strangely like the magic aura around Viole’s hands. She turned and whispered to Amalthea and Viole, who escaped through the crowd, bursting into the fields. Before Naver could notice them, Ximena walked through the crowd holding the tulle, sucking in a breath and remembering the chapter in A Guide To The World Of Advadia Nephage, one of Ximena’s favourite books, where the author wrote how to create a female Mage name.

Take a colour, and change it ever so slightly. For example, Viole or Turquoi, an unwritten character who did not appear in the original book. For the last name, take a female name ending in ‘A’, like Linda (Lindlach) and end it in ‘lach’. Make sure to remove the ‘A’.

“My name,” Ximena announced to all of the Mages in the crowd as the true Mage Princess fled, “Is Maroone Ximenlach.”

Amalthea doubted her decision to run with Viole the moment that the crowd started cheering.

“Lady Maroone! Lady Maroone!”

Viole turned to look at Amalthea the moment they could no longer see the Mages.

“Who are you?”

At first, Amalthea didn’t respond.

“Amalthea Bookwell,” she said reluctantly, backing away from Viole as her hands started to glow again.

Viole laughed.

“You really think I’d believe that? Only a Mage or Aerylbryh would be seen wearing that wreckage of a gown, and ‘Bookwell’ is a very human name.”

“What’s an Aerylbryh?”

Viole rolled her eyes.

“Please. An Aerylbryh is sort of like a reverse ghost- somebody that manifests before they’re born.”

“Well, then, I could be an Aerylbryh of a human!”

“That’s not how it works, ‘Amalthea’. Now then, tell me your real name.”

Amalthea sighed.

“Would you believe me if I told you I wasn’t from one of the twenty-four kingdoms?”

“No.”

“Okay, then, I’m a Mage.”

“I knew it! What’s your name?”

Lady Maroone! Lady Maroone!

“Maroone.”

“So you’re telling me you and your friend back there have the same name?”

“No, she, um, took my name?”

Viole laughed.

“I’ll respect your privacy. If you’re making ridiculous tales about not being from the twenty-four kingdoms, then it must be bad. Let me guess, your name is Rustredd Petunilach?”

Amalthea didn’t say anything.

‘Lady Maroone Ximenlach’ was very perplexed by the strange turn her life had taken. First, she was dreaming about books, then she was in one of her favourites, and then she was suddenly one of the main characters? Ximena wasn’t sure she had made the right decision, because it was on impulse. 

Lord Naver had been attempting to teach her to control ‘her magic’ since the moment she arrived in Archivia, the capital city of the Mages, and she had kept up the facade pretty well by making firecrackers to use as ‘the explosive sparks of unruly magic’. 

She was staring out placidly at the red-tiled roofs she had seen so vividly in her imagination. They were exactly as she thought they would be.

“Lady Maroone!” exclaimed a servant, rushing into her quarters. Ximena rolled her eyes and smoothed down her leather pants.

Pants! If there was one reason Ximena didn’t regret taking Viole’s place, it was the pants!

“Yes, yes, I know, ‘His Majesty requires a training session’.”

The servant’s face grew dark.

“My Queen…”

“What did you just call me?”

“I’m sorry, Lady Maroone. The humans snuck an evil ‘ambassador’ into the castle.”

“So?” asked Ximena, getting impatient.

“His Majesty Lord Naver is dead as of five minutes ago.”

Viole Lindlach had never left the Mage Kingdom before. All she knew was that she and the mysterious ‘Amalthea’ were somewhere east of the Funkle Forest. 

‘Amalthea’ shielded her face from the sun as she looked at an indistinguishable mass on the horizon.

“What’s that?”

Viole squinted.

“I think it’s the Funkle Forest.”

“What is the Funkle Forest?”

Viole stared at Amalthea.

“I’m starting to reconsider you not being from this world.”

“But really, Viole, what is the Funkle Forest?”

“A mushroom forest. The funkle live there.”

“But that doesn’t help at all! What on Earth is a funkle?”

Viole turned to stare at Amalthea quizzically.

“You really are strange, Amalthea Bookwell.”

Across the fields of grass and weeds, a couple days later, and at least one mile from Amalthea and Viole, the city of Archivia was bustling with motion. Mages were training in magic of war, and females were crowding the streets, waiting for their Queen to emerge in her beautiful golden coronation gown and purple satin gloves. The coronation gown was a relic from the times of Eqilla, the period in history when Mages and humans were one with one another, and queens and kings were crowned by blood. It was even more uncomfortable than Ximena’s purple Easter dress (just a few days ago, Ximena would have thought that was impossible). She gave a longing look at her sensible pants as maids rushed around her, speaking and sounding quite like Aunt Lillian.

“Your bun is a mess!”

“Goodness me, what is this brown goo in your hair?”

Ximena was very glad that she had brought her science kit to Archivia.

Ten minutes later, Queen Maroone Ximenlach was walking into the city on a makeshift aisle, looking powerful and regal, and feeling like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world. She felt tempted to dump the Mages, but what would she do then? Try and find Amalthea and Viole? They’d already be halfway through the Funkle Forest by then. 

Indeed, at the exact time Ximena was being crowned Queen of the Mages, Amalthea and Viole were partway through the Funkle Forest. They had not seen any funkle yet, but had heard trees being chopped. Viole said that the funkle were at war with the trees, to which Amalthea replied with a flurry of questions. Viole didn’t answer any of them.

Amalthea was also perplexed by the fact that the trees were mushrooms. Mushrooms! Giant mushrooms with flat tops that had mushroom cottages on top of them! Amalthea found it ridiculous that you could be at war with trees at all, let alone then live on top of them. That was before she even met her first funkle. 

Chanterelle the funkle was playing with her little sister Shiitake when she saw two Mages tramping through her part of the wood. Chanterelle’s father had surrounded their small section of the forest with a decorative tree-stump fence to keep everybody out, but all the funkle went ‘Oh, Portobello,’ and ignored the fence anyways. Portobello was well-liked by most of the funkle, but none of them lifted a finger when Mages entered his property. In fact, most of them didn’t even know.

Shiitake started crying when she saw the Mages. One of them was wearing a trainwreck of a gown- but Chanterelle was fascinated by the way the burnt, dirty fabric flew in the wind and the iron skeleton of the skirt and corset glinted in the light. The other was wearing a simple white dress, and had bright violet eyes.

The first Mage jumped back, screaming. 

“Monsters!”

Shiitake and Chanterelle looked frantically for the monsters, whimpering.

The second Mage laughed, as if she wasn’t concerned at all.

“Those are funkles, Amalthea.”

“THAT is a FUNKLE? It looks like one of my sister’s maggot experiments!”

The Mage with the purple eyes bit back a laugh. 

“I’ll save that question for later.”

Shiitake whimpered, and the sisters crawled away. Chanterelle was offended. Her and her sister? MONSTERS? That girl with the weird name (Amateia? Ammeltia?) was the monster, not her and her sister!

Amalthea was flabbergasted. The funkles ran away, and Viole rolled her eyes.

“You scared them, Amalthea.”

“Such CREATURES can be SCARED?!”

“Yes. By the way, is Maroone your sister?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, hurry up. We’re never going to get through the Funkle Forest if you gawk at everything you see.”

“I-um-I-”

Viole laughed.

“I can’t imagine what your reaction will be when you meet an adult funkle.”

“How bad can it be? I’ve already met seniors!”

“Amalthea. Those were children.”

“Oh.”

Amalthea thought she could see another funkle in the woods chopping down a mushroom tree. It had a round head, unlike the other two’s flat ones, and a large, lumpy brown body with white specks. She shuddered and looked away.

“My Queen!”

Ximena whirled around. Her maggot deterrent was nearly complete, and she planned on shipping it out to the farmers in all of the smaller Mage villages.

Behind her was a horrified maid. It was Perle, the one who had told her about Naver’s death. 

“Your war councillor advised that you lead the troops against the humans tonight. You have no time for your frivolous experiments.”

Ximena rolled her eyes.

“What I have no time for is this dress. Perle, why can’t I wear my pants today?”

Perle didn’t respond, only brushed a strand of brown hair out of her stubborn face.

“Please don’t tell me I have to wear this into battle; I can barely move in it!”

Perle rolled her eyes.

“You don’t have to move in it, my Lady, you’ll be casting spells.”

Ximena looked down at her maggot deterrent, determined not to talk to Perle. 

Perle sighed and left the room. Suddenly, Ximena’s face lit up.

“Perle, fetch me a snack. Bread and butter, please.”

Perle Annlach was astounded when she came to clear away Lady Maroone’s leftovers. A broken corset was laying on the ground, looking like it’d been hacked at by a butter knife, which seemed to have disappeared, the bread was gone without a single crumb, and the leather pants and shirt folded on the chair had been replaced with a lacy skirt. The white ribbon from the corset, instead of being attached, was hanging out the window, and was tied to the leg of a bed that had been pushed over to the desk. Hats without ribbons and ruined corsets scattered the floor, and a string of knotted ribbons hung out the window. Most importantly, however, the Queen of the Mages was gone without a successor to lead the Mages in war.

Viole handed Amalthea a large piece of tree stem.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Eat it,” Viole said, “We’re heading across the Fields of Eternity tonight. We probably won’t get any more food until we reach the Pixie Copse in two or so days.”

“But it’s a tree!”

“It’s mushroom, that’s what it is. Besides, it’s not like the funkle will get mad at us for hurting the trees.”

“But somebody could have made their home there!”

Viole rolled her eyes.

“There’s no shortage of trees in this place. The whole ground is littered with seeds. Most are duds, but the trees grow in about five days, if not less.”

Amalthea didn’t say anything, but started nibbling at her mushroom.

They had seen four families of funkle since their encounter with Chanterelle and Shiitake, but Amalthea didn’t find them any less odd, she just knew not to talk about it. A couple of young funkle were laughing and playing among the trees. Amalthea had screamed when she first heard a funkle laugh. It sounded like a kitchen knife sliding smoothly through a mushroom, and she mistakenly thought someone was being murdered. 

Viole and Amalthea burst through the curtain of mushroom trees, expecting to see the clear golden field of the Plains of Eternity stretching on for miles. Instead, they saw masses and masses of bodies, the sound of screams and the hiss of magic as flashes of purple lit up the sky.

“No,” whispered Viole, running towards the field. “No, no…”

Amalthea squeaked and darted back into the forest. She took a deep breath, and then ripped off her ruined corset and skirt, waiting for a break in the fighting.

And then she ran like she never had before.

Ximena had just made it into the Will O’Wisp Cliffs when the battle started. The chestnut mare brayed softly as Ximena chewed on the bread that she had stolen from the castle, and she patted her. The mare leaned down and started nibbling at the sparse grass. Gentle blue flickers of light surrounded them everywhere. It was mesmerizing, but also impressive. Each will o’wisp contained a single memory- one of something that shaped this world. Ximena extended her arm and let the spirits swish around it, examining it. She heard a collective murmur, and then one spirit flew forward.

A swish of a pen. Fingers on a typewriter.

Ximena gasped, and the little soft light flickered and went out. The chestnut mare stamped its hooves, and she untied its bridle from the wispy, blue-leafed tree. Purple flowers peeked out from the sheer white cliffs, and the will o’wisps danced among the trees, sighing as the noise of the distant battle penetrated their forest. Ximena and her horse walked quietly through the woods, searching for a place to spend the night. The will o’wisps sighed again, and then the trees rained a shower of leaves, forming a makeshift bed. Ximena tied her horse to a thin grey-trunked tree, and then laid down, encircled by will o’wisps, who lowered her into a quiet sleep.

In the chaos of the war, nobody noticed a purple-eyed girl weaving a path through the destruction until she raised her hands in the air. They glowed a bright, fiery purple. 

Tens of thousands of iron blades radiated out from where she stood, forming a circle that spanned nearly the whole field, and she turned, decapitating at least half of the human soldiers. She screamed, and a pillar of fire shot into the sky as she lifted into the air.

“NOBODY- HARMS- MY- PEOPLE!”

And then she collapsed silently to the ground, and all of the humans and Mages looked each other in the eye and recognized their loss. The humans ignored the Mages, and tended to their dead. Perle, who had been brought out as one of their awkward sword fighters, ran to the young woman’s side.

“Maroone?”

But her hair was curly and brown, and she was wearing a white cloth dress that was never in Lady Maroone’s wardrobe. Perle lifted Viole's limp purple hand into the air. “All hail the true Queen of the Mages!”

And then the humans lifted their swords and charged.

Amalthea’s legs were burning, every muscle in pain. 

Just a little faster, just a little faster…

She collapsed on the ground, panting, when she got beneath the cover of the trees. Little flying creatures with stony grey skin holding acorns and balls of wire flitted through the trees, gnashing their pearly white teeth.

Pixies, dear, pixies, and I’m afraid she did.

The Pixie Copse…

Panting and aching all over, Amalthea looked around. The pixies turned to look at her, growling. Everything else looked marginally like it should- but the pink leaves on the trees were less plump than they should have been for a proper fairy forest, and their light grey stems were just a twinge too dark. Many of the strange glowing orbs on the trees looked like they had turned into dark glass balls, and the rest glowed dimly. The flowers and vines seemed weak, feeble, and half-dead, and the polka-dotted toadstools looked like they had been squished underfoot, but really just grew quite flatly and didn’t seem to have a stem. The pixies glared and hissed at her, and she inched away, bumping against one of the tall, looming trees. She pulled herself to her feet, gritting her teeth, and then ran again, this time with a cloud of grey pixies following behind her.

“Viole?”

“Mother?”

Turquoi Lindlach smiled down at her daughter. 

“I knew you’d come to join me here, sweet child.”

Viole looked desperately at her surroundings.

“Where are we?”

“Ukkin.”

And then Viole screamed, a pillar of light erupting from her throat, and she was pulled upwards, as if she was a fish who had bit on a pirate’s hook. Up and up and up…

Viole gasped, and her eyes snapped open. She was in a pretty little section of the Funkle Forest, and rolled over, looking for Amalthea and assuming that much of the things that had just passed had been a dream.

“You’re awake.”

It was a whispery voice, like that of a Willow’s Breath. A young Mage girl with pearl-coloured skin and long dark hair in a red dress with a little frilly apron was looking at her with her head tilted.

“What’s your name, my Lady?”

Viole laughed nervously.

“You don’t have to call me that…”

“Yes, my Queen, I do.”

“Where’s Amalthea?”

“Who?”

“Lady Maroone’s sister.”

“Lady Maroone was a fraud. You are our real queen, my Lady. Please, do grace me with your name.”

“Queen? What happened to Lord Naver?”

The pearl-skinned woman, who Viole had deduced was a palace maid, chewed on her lip.

“Well, my Lady, Lord Naver was murdered by humans. That’s the cause of this war.”

“They’re still fighting?”

“Yes. Name?

The palace maid seemed quite annoyed, so Viole answered.

“Viole Lindlach. Nothing special.”

“Perle Annlach, my lady.”

Perle extended her hand, but Viole ignored it, and ran off.

“Lady Viole!”

Perle ran after her, sighing.

She’s just like Lady Maroone.

Margaret Bookwell was dressed all in black, wedged in a corner beside Charlotta, who was fake-crying. Lillian and Astrid were sitting nearby, one slumped in a pile of satin, and the other stick-straight with a placid expression. Margaret ran a finger over the gold design on the small black book in her pocket, and over the musty pages. 

“Misses Ximena and Amalthea Bookwell, daughters of Miss Margaret Bookwell, may you rest in peace.”

Charlotta snuck a furtive glance at Margaret and was shocked to see that she wasn’t crying.

Lillian started making large hoglike snorts, evidently her attempt to fake-cry, which Astrid ignored, and Charlotta sat up straight as the name everyone was interested in was mentioned.

“Miss Linda Ann Sue Bookwell, wife of the late George Charles Bookwell. May you rest in peace.”

Margaret tightened her clutch around the book, and whispered into its pages.

“I know you’re there. Mother may be gone, but you are not.”

Lillian and Astrid heard her whispers, and burst into laughter. The priest eyed them angrily.

“Misses Lillian and Astrid Bookwell, will you please follow me?”

Margaret wrote two letters on the cover of the book with her trembling pointer finger, and then her world erupted into fire.  

Ten million years ago, Ukki and Sochro created everything. Sochro was most proud of his Mages, and Ukki of a race she called Staerbrenn. The God siblings brought the female Staerbrenn and the male Mages together, and unified them under the name ‘Mages’. When the Staerbrenn died, they would go to a beautiful, peaceful field called Ukkin; but when a Mage died, they would go to true heaven: a place called Sochronn, for magic-users only. Peace was maintained for millenia, until one day, a Staerbrenn Mage was born.

The introduction to Advadia was racing through Ximena’s mind as she walked quickly through the Will O’Wisp Cliffs. She was trying to find Amalthea and Viole; so she had decided on a path to cover as much ground as possible. She had estimated that she would reach the Naiad River by dawn, but the sun was rising quickly, and the thin, wavery trees never seemed to end. Ximena stepped through a particularly thick patch of fog, and then, before she knew it, the will o’ wisps were mewling from behind her, and she was up to her ankles in unnaturally blue water. A purring sound came from beside her, and a slippery, scaly tail slid against her leg.

“Hello, beautiful.”

Amalthea had determined by the second hour of running that the pixies behind her were not going to stop. She was bone-tired, but the pixies seemed quite energetic, bouncing up and down on their ragged brown wings in the air. Ahead, Amalthea could see a green-gold light. It was brighter than all the lights she had seen in this forest, so she raced ahead, hoping that she would be able to escape the menacing beasts. The trees started twining around each other as she dove deeper into the forest, running as fast as possible while utterly exhausted, when the ground suddenly gave way beneath her feet and she fell through into nothingness.

Viole’s booted feet pounded against the forest floor as she ran. Perle was miles behind her, she was flying, racing through the forest…

A single Mage with a weak blue shield around him was fending off dozens of human soldiers. Many other single Mages stood around the field, trapped in little bubbles, gritting their teeth.

Viole’s feet seemed to lift her up into the air, and her arms became little powerful wings that shone like amethysts in the sunlight. Viole, the little starling floating in the warground sky, lifted her wings towards the sun, and the ground rippled like a tsunami wave, tree roots reaching up to firmly hold the Mages’ legs in place. A torrent of rain was released from the stormy clouds gathered around the starling, but the Mages’ shields, strengthened by her power, protected them as tornadoes and cyclones rotated around the humans, and the starling cawed as her violet-rippled body began to lengthen and grow, changing colours, and her small purple head and inquisitive black eyes began to morph, until there was only a single pinpoint of purple, glowing, rippling…

But this time, Viole Lindlach did not collapse as she fell to the ground. She floated gently downward, clothed in a fiery robe, her entrancing purple eyes staring at the humans before her.

“Tell your king that I send word to his people. Tell him my name is Lady Viole Lindlach of the Mages, and I would like to offer him a peace treaty. Tell King Hanaver that we would like to reforge the shaky alliances you were working with under Naver.”

“I-I thought the Queen of the Mages was named Maroone Ximenlach?”

Viole just raised her head higher, her violet eyes unblinking, as she walked away into the Funkle Forest, where Perle was waiting crossly. Her eyes widened as she saw Viole striding solemnly through the woods, her scarlet gown of fire trailing behind her, before being extinguished into a sort of dull brown fabric laced with gold.

“Lady Viole?”

“Leave me be, Perle. Go help the others.”

Only after the pearl-skinned maid had rushed off did Viole Lindlach collapse to the ground. Millions of funkle flew into the clearing and sat around her skirts, no longer afraid of her. Chanterelle and Shiitake were there, with their father and mother and all of the other funkle they knew.

By a sort of primal instinct, Viole knew all of their names, and she started to whisper them as a glassy tear rolled down her cheek.

“Oh, Chanterelle, Shiitake, Portobello…”

“What have I done?”

“Manava eniyan, we will send the manusa child to the paláti lusè lakara,” whispered the figure kneeling before the throne. 

The shadowed figure on the wood-woven throne shook her head, her two pale braids tossing from side to side.

“Bring the manusa here, Rana-Suraya. I do not have the time to go to the paláti. The pixies are getting more violent, and I must protect my people.”

The gold-green light shone onto Rana-Suraya’s face, and she winced, closing her ice-blue eyes, her pale blonde knee-length ponytail hanging down her spine.

“Of course, manava eniyan.”

When Rana-Suraya exited the room with her silver gauntlets and neckplate clinking, a dark figure came out of the shadows in the throne room.

“Kameli, you need not be afraid of our manusa guest,” the manava eniyan whispered.

 The dark figure shook her head and released her black hair from its sloppy bun.

“I have every right to be scared, manava eniyan. It could be her.”

“It is not her, Kameli. Syri has seen her mind. It is not her.”

Kameli exhaled shakily, fiddling with a strand of hair. Twenty-seven years ago, she had everything. Wild from the plotted destruction of her people, ready to marry into the human line and steal Hanaver’s heart. They had confessed their love, and a wedding gown was being made- until everything went wrong and a woman from the Mother-world found her way to Hanaver. Exiled as an outcast when Hanaver realized what she had tried to do, Kameli was still hurting, worried that the manusa would steal her place with the elves of the forest.

“Kameli.”

The manava eniyan’s voice was slow and rhythmic.

“Do you remember the story of Syri I?” 

The manava eniyan did not wait for an answer before continuing.

“Long ago, the elves of the forest were wild things, bow-hunters living in huts under the trees with short, jagged amilaki.”

Kameli, noting the elven word for hair, nodded.

“An elf named Jidon discovered the ways of the trees, and wove herself a home from the treetops. When the other elves asked her secret, she said ‘I am grateful for their gifts.’ The more elaborate Jidon’s home became, the more the other elves wanted one. Every time they asked, she would say the same thing: ‘I am grateful for their gifts.’ The elves began to take their anger out on the trees, but it was Syri I who discovered Jidon’s secrets. She educated the other elves, and they began to grow their amilaki. When a loved one was close to death, they would cut their amilaki and sacrifice both their amilaki and position in the trees, and in return, the trees would save their loved ones. They learned that anger was not the answer, Kameli, but love.

“You will see in a little while.”

The first thing that Amalthea saw when she opened her eyes was a bright golden-green light. She was suspended in a cage of woven branches, high above the tops of golden, luscious trees, their leaves slightly tinged with green at one end and crimson at another. Below her, a woman wearing a heavy silver crown across her forehead with a long, swinging cream-coloured ponytail and a large neckplate, arm guards, and a fascinating shirt that looked to Amalthea’s eyes to be sewn of clouds with silver armour on top was standing in front of her, holding twin short daggers. A black panther stalked around her half-bare legs, snarling.

Her piercing ice-blue eyes stared calmly at Amalthea as the bottom of her cage detached, but instead of falling, it floated gently downwards with her standing on it, like a lost dove’s feather in the wind.

“Come, manusa. Our manava eniyan is waiting.”

Amalthea cocked her head, but the panther snarled, so she followed the panther-woman across an incredibly complex latticework of woven branches, each about the width of Amalthea’s foot. Her guide leapt lithely from one to another, her panther dancing across the mosaic of intertwined leafless branches, arcing upwards to form a building about every five minutes. Amalthea could see what looked like a gleaming mountain on the horizon, until she realized that it was a giant palace overlooking a lake, with an open woven-branch courtroom and a glowing ball of green-gold energy in the center.

The paláti lusè cedarra, where the manava eniyan currently sat, was ten minutes away from the paláti lusè lakara, which Amalthea had just passed. When Amalthea reached it, she gasped in awe at its size. An endless spiral of towering wood, reaching up to the sky and blossoming into a shape like the foliage of a tree, tiny lanterns hanging on the edge, loomed in front of her, each tiny twig thoughtfully intertwined with another, each tall marble pillar on the top plateau carved with a different symbol, each star painted on the midnight dome that topped the whole building positioned to make a constellation painted clearly above the paláti lusè cedarra.

When Amalthea and her escort reached the top of the paláti lusè cedarra’s seemingly endless stairs, the panther-woman nodded at another woman, who was sitting regally on a throne, an ornate silver crown weighing her head down. Her bright blue eyes were beautiful and sad, and she beckoned to the panther-woman, who stepped forward lithely.

“Rana-Suraya, Syri irr lide heisca manusa endula edrich forron. Evve irin u eid-eniyan manusa. Kameli horra ensiila.”

Rana-Suraya, Syri has seen this human’s fate and history. She is a human princess. Kameli will be furious.

“Eidu?”

Why?

“Rdu preze. Meien lusto concorra io sei manusa.”

Not now. I must explain to the human.

The crowned woman turned to Amalthea and bowed. In return, Amalthea curtsied, as this woman held herself like a queen from one of Grandmama’s stories.

“Greetings, My Princess.”

Amalthea was baffled, but still spoke, albeit softly.

“Greetings, My Queen.”

“Welcome to our forest kingdom.”

“It- It’s quite splendid.”

“Now, child, what is your name?”

“Amalthea, My Queen.”

“Now, now then, Amalthea, you’ll have to stop addressing me like that. We are equals: eniyan and eid-eniyan. Queen and princess.”

Amalthea nodded, and the queen continued.

“Your voice- cadens- it reminds me of your udurra’s- your mother’s. And your amilaki- it is gorgeous! Nothing like Margaret’s at all.”

“Amilaki?”

“Your sacred essence. Or, as the manusa- humans and Mages- call it, your hair.”

She spoke the last word with loathing, as if she detested its coarse sound.

“You knew my mother, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew Queen Margaret when she was young and bright, like you are, and like Hanaver was.”

Amalthea didn’t reply for a while, simply gazed at that heavy, wise face that was beautiful in its imperfections.

“Do you know where Viole is? Or Ximena?”

The elf queen merely smiled.

“The nievé will tell you when she wants you to know.”

“Come, now, dear, we won’t hurt you.”

The voice was soft, bubbly, and soothing, and it gently eased Ximena out of sleep.

Above her was a soft, indistinct human face, and Ximena knew right away that whatever being was talking to her was perfect, and leaned into its embrace, smiling.

“No, definitely not…”

Her voice came out of her in a lazy stream of bubbles, but she didn’t notice it, her eyes were locked on the perfect, beautiful woman in front of her, with a small, bright red mouth and glittering blue eyes, and luscious golden hair, all formed out of water, with only the impression of what colours would have been there…

Soft, pale lake water floated into her mouth, and through her body, but it didn’t matter…

Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, and she pushed upward with all her weight, and suddenly, the once-weightless water seemed to weigh a billion tons, and the face of the creature turned into a hard, green-scaled thing with glowing amber slits for eyes and a hissing snake tongue, and it swiftly reached out a hand and clutched Ximena’s ankle with an iron fist. Ximena could feel water starting to dampen her clothes, leak into her boots, and she squirmed, thinking of the science kit tucked in her left boot, the one that the creature grabbed at…

Her boots!

She swiftly pulled off her right boot, and her toes instantly froze in their thin, soaked sock. It laughed and grabbed Ximena on the same foot with its second hand, leaving nothing to defend itself with as the boot slammed down on its head. It lost consciousness and let go of Ximena’s ankles. The water started to murmur, and other, similar creatures began to crawl out of the shadows. Still clutching the soaking leather boot, Ximena darted up to the top of the water, except she just couldn’t get her head out, not enough air… She wildly grasped at a roundish ball in the water, and felt a line snap under her fingers as she collapsed into something below her.

When the Queen of the Mages emerged from the forest, it was with a cohort of funkle surrounding her. The mothers and children had returned to their homes, but the rest of them followed Viole proudly as her dress, turned crystal by her tears, glistened in a billion colours that no one had ever seen before. As soon as they saw her, the humans bowed low and touched their noses to the ground, not speaking. She continued to stride forward, and her entire body twinged with this regal, ethereal movement, wanting to tear off the gown and run, playing with the wind and trees as she did when she was a child. Slowly, the wind began to lift her off the ground, taking her upwards. The humans rose and watched her, divine in her crystal gown, disappearing into the clouds. Perle looked on, wide-eyed, and gasped.

No. She can’t be that powerful.

Turquoi Lindlach had been wandering through the fields of Ukkin for years, and nothing eventful had happened. She hadn’t been bored, or happy, or miserable, she had simply been there. When a pearly window opened up in the blue sky, she wasn’t surprised, or afraid, not even when a violet-eyed young woman stepped out into the open field, and smiled at her. Turquoi recognized her daughter, but didn’t particularly care. She didn’t care about anything anymore. She didn’t care about the heart-gripping resonation in her soul that every Mage in all of Advadia felt. She didn’t care as the ground slammed into that of another world, and a bridge between Ukkin and Sochronn was formed- or, rather, an entire new inter-heaven between the two worlds was created. Turquoi Lindlach didn’t care when Ukki and Sochro, the creators of all, were forgotten by every single Mage, and when the sky rippled and turned purple. Turquoi Lindlach didn’t care until her heart began to thaw, and then she ran to her daughter and embraced her. She could feel something new inside her Viole- a sense of maturity, righteousness. And she knew, then, who her daughter was meant to be. Ukki and Sochro were gone, and the Mages needed a new goddess. A goddess who would ensure that all female Mages were not only born with magic, but gifted with it.

“You may move on,” said the new Queen of the Heavens, locking her mother in the eyes yet addressing every Mage woman, child, and man on Ukkin and Sochronn, “I have made things right again.”

Only hours later, Perle Annlach saw giant pieces of crumbling dirt falling from the sky, but being no more than a grain when they landed. The newfound goddess descended from the stars with them, and Perle knew in her heart that Ukkin and Sochronn were gone along with their creators. 

She could feel gold and silver coursing through her veins, coming out of her fingertips in delicious swirls. A memory came back to her, and she wove herself a gown of the luminous strands that began to pour out of her.

Mommy! Mommy! Look! I found my magic!

Perle began to cry, but her tears were rose gold and bronze, painting her face like Ukki’s was once painted, precious, beautiful designs on her cheeks. And she remembered the black burial shrouds as her family was taken away, how she was taken in as a palace maid…

And then she felt an exhilarating thrill as she realized what was happening, and her tears were tears of joy, diamonds like the stars in the sky as the thin substance continued to flow out of her fingertips, intertwining with the trees around it. It was by no means as powerful as Viole’s, but Perle knew what it was.

It was her magic.

In that second, all the Staerbrenn became one with the Mages, and there was no difference anymore. In that second, they all felt what Perle felt, the strong solidity and righteousness in their soul.

To those who had always wished for something greater than being a woman or a girl, the world had found its equality.

The world had found its magic.

“What do we do with it, Anak’Slov?”

“Leave it. We will learn what species it is by how it wriggles its fins.”

Ximena forced her eyes open and tried to stand. She was in a small rope net tossed  haphazardly in the middle of a forest floor. In front of her stood two men with the lower bodies of chestnut mares. They were clearly Advadia centaurs- there was no other species in this world like them. The passage where Prince Hanaver was trapped by the centaurs’ game trap was quite amusing- the centaurs were most certainly blockheads- but he had a sword. The sharpest thing Ximena had was the butter knife, which she had stuck in her left boot with the science kit. 

Ximena’s stomach rumbled. She had finished the measly portion of bread that she stole from the castle the day before she left the Will O’ Wisp Cliffs.

“Hello, little fishie, us’re gonna have you for supper…”

“You will do no such thing. I am the farthest thing you can get from a fish.”

“It’s a talkin’ one, Anak’Slov! Them talkin’ fishies’re the best’a eat ‘round here.”

“You know, that would be quite similar to cannabalism.”

“What’s cambalism, eh, fishie?”

Ximena reached down into her boot, and the two centaurs frowned at her. She fumbled to grab the butter knife, which she gripped tightly, and science kit, which she slipped into her drenched pocket, and then she took her boot off with a flourish. Palming the knife, she quickly slashed the thin cord, and then slammed both of the centaurs on the head with the boot. She fingered her science kit to make sure it was safe, and then darted into the woods, paying no attention to the dancing sky behind the trees and the soil that was raining down from above, filtered by the soft green canopy.

Amalthea was sitting on a balcony in the paláti lusè cedarra, alone, when a flicker of cold steel ran across the back of her neck. Behind her, a dark-skinned, dark-haired woman stood, hatred in her eyes.

“You should die, daughter of Hanaver.”

Daughter of Hanaver…

Cool! So, this Prince Hanaver could have multi-coloured skin?

“So your queen wasn’t joking, was she?”

“Don’t speak in riddles, child.”

“I really am a princess?”

“Of course you are. I’d love to scar you right now for what your mother did, but killing you would be even better. Alas, the manava eniyan would never let me. Better to just dispose of you while I can.”

“Your queen said I could stay here-”

“Child, I don’t have a queen.”

The dark elf clamped Amalthea’s hands behind her back, and led her down the stairs, through a series of quiet tunnels, and out into free wilderness, not onto the tree-branch roads of the Elf Kingdom. She led Amalthea through a twisting maze of trees, before opening a bamboo fence gate and throwing her into a circular pasture so large that she couldn’t see the edges.

“Who are you?”

“Right now, my name is Kameli. Before, I was Princess Camellia of the Fifth Colony. Before that, I was a queen.”

“How does it feel, now that the Rosk are gone?”

“Empty. Everything feels as empty as the Plains of Eternity.”

“You have me, Camellia. Let me be your everything like your people used to be.”

“Hanaver, will you ever be my everything?”

“Yes, Camellia, I will. I will be your everything as soon as you are mine.”

“I’m not your everything?”

“You won’t have enough substance to fill my heart until I see all of yours, Camellia.”

“Don’t call me Camellia. It’s unnatural.”

“What should I call you, then?”

“Kameli. Call me the name I was born with.”

Hanaver arrived at the Plains of Eternity that morning, the rising sun glimmering on his face. Viole stood with the sun behind her, wearing a gown of wispy purple clouds, and bowed down low, a corona of colours surrounding her like she was the sun. Hanaver descended, bowed, and they locked eyes. The trees were woven-gold; the grass was small silver blades, and the clouds in the sky were copper, dancing around a rose-gold sun, where a crystal staircase appeared, topped by a door, which swung open and emitted a welcoming light that floated around the florid sun and the purple sky, and the wind whispered to Hanaver, before the door closed and the world returned to normal.

“King Hanaver?”

Viole’s face was gentle, but not exactly beautiful. She held herself like a goddess, those alluring eyes glittering in the light. Hanaver took a step forward, and something crunched under his feet. He bent down to look at it, and it was a small locket with a picture inside. A slip of charred paper was tucked inside the locket, and the one letter he could make out was a strongly defined ‘K’. That face reminded me of another woman who held herself like Viole- someone so long ago that her name faded. Hanaver blinked and stood up, a small crystal tear in his eye, shining pearlescently as the sun rose behind Viole and her corona disappeared.

“I have come to say that I accept your treaty. I never wanted war under Naver; it simply happened. It is time to end the constant war, Lady Viole.”

“Of course, King Hanaver.”

And they stood together, watching the rising sun as the human soldiers began the long climb, carrying their dead, back to their kingdom, and the Mages filed into the Funkle Forest.

Hanaver was quiet for a moment, and he looked into those rippling purple eyes, at one moment violet, and lavender the next. The gown around her mimicked her eyes, and her hands began to glow purple, the sign of a Mage monarch. And then the purple slowly descended into brown, but came out the other end as a bright, almost fiery gold, and the dress around her changed into plates of metal. The Mage queen stood in the endless field as the ground rippled, and shut her alluring purple eyes, those pinpoints of radiance that stood out from the darkness that once glittered in the light. When she opened her eyes again, they were that same, beautiful gold, and rather than glittering in the light, they were the light, the only light, so pure, phosphorescent, radiant, that the sun seemed an orb of darkness against them, and she turned to look at Hanaver, her face solemn, her brown hair dark and insignificant where it once was radiant and shiny, its glory stolen by the power of the eyes, that, if they had been beautiful before, were now queenly, and if they had been queenly before, ethereal, and if they had once been ethereal, were now too grand to be graced by the insignificant power of mere humble words, that had once seemed like everything to the King of the Humans. He once would have called her eyes radiant or phosphorescent, but now they did not emit light, they were light itself, In only a fraction of the smallest amount of time, Viole had become a woman from a girl, and a queen from a woman, and a goddess from a queen. Hanaver, who had once in his naïveté thought he was the greatest power in the world, bowed low to this new Mage queen, whose eyes said everything words could not.

Partway through the Centaur Forest, Ximena’s body froze as her mind plunged her into a place she believed she had never been before, a clearing where early memories- too early; unnaturally early- began to surface. First she was a baby, and then she was plunged deeper, into a past life of a young woman of twenty-three years of age, and then she began to slowly decrease in years, except the whole time, she was in the world of Advadia Nephage. She remembered racing through the Funkle Forest in leather pants, Amalthea at her side, a woman with the soul of a child, and climbing trees to dance with Will O’Wisps against the sky. She remembered floating on pearly-pink cloud-mounts with Willow’s Breaths, the creatures of air and dreams, at her side, with their white, perfect faces and kind smiles, and sitting under a willow tree with a sketch-pad of rough-hewn paper, watching as Warvannh emerged from the lake beyond, their aquamarine bodies shimmering translucently against the reed-grass. She remembered crawling through the lava-caves underneath all of Advadia and marvelling at the power of the People of Lava who could dwell in such a powerful and precise world, not having yet reached her twenties and the vast understanding that came with it, and wandering in the dream-land with a cohort of Aerylbryh all around her, dancing in the blue-grey mists and scaling the peaks of smooth blue marble with Amalthea at her side. Ximena Bookwell remembered living under another name, yet riding griffins and hunting werewolves at night in spite of it. She remembered ignoring her heritage so that she could live as a lifelong child, sneaking into the secret rituals of the Gorghinn at night and wandering in the crystal caves of the Ysson, hating the Warvannh like a foolish child. She remembered entering her teens with awe, watching wraiths descend into their homes at night like angels, and, even before that, pretending she was a centaur whenever she rode a horse. She remembered her father’s face, so clear and sharp, yet also remembered dismissing it to play trickery with the naiads, who used to call her a sweet child whenever she swam with them, and watching the daytime dryads emerge from their trees, wondering at them, and still in awe that she was in her double digits. She remembered her mother guiding her as she gazed at the angelic ways of the Urahinn and darted out of the way of giants’ clumsy fingers, giggling. She remembered the wickedness of the beautiful mermaids, and the kindness and ethereal beauty of the graceful unicorns in their neat, pretty pasture. She remembered turning five camping outside the caves of trolls, and balancing on the tree highways of the Elf Kingdom. She remembered a pixie who would never chase her, and was almost her friend, and a pirate who vouched for them to adopt her family. She saw her memories fading, yet still could vaguely feel those pinpoints of purple that were the eyes of Viole Lindlach, and a kind face that she knew as her father’s, a face that had been described many, many times in her favourite story from her real-world childhood, the one where she had had an aunt named Lillian and a cousin named Henri. His name came back to her in a flash, and it hit her with a punch.

Ximena Bookwell’s father was Hanaver, once a prince and now a king.

They came out of the trees one by one, elegantly stepping between the acacia and nasturtium, their ivory heads bowed, silver threads dripping down their long, pearly necks like water. They turned to look at Amalthea, and then the next wave came, these ones blush pink with blue eyes and golden manes, sharing the same crystal spiral horns as the white ones, glowing a billion different colours, tiny coruscations of light in the little grove. Then came the chestnut brown with black hairs dripping down their necks like tar, and a wave that seemed to be the same as the first white ones until their eyes, one purple and one golden, looked up towards Amalthea. There were forest green with ivory hair, one that was black as night all over with fiery red eyes, one a light caramel with a tan mane and the brightest nightshade eyes, and even more, countless variations. One of the blush-pink creatures stepped to the front gracefully and raised its head, staring at Amalthea with its bright blue eyes.

“We have waited a long time for you, Creator.”

One of the chestnut brown stepped forward and whispered “Sister.”

“Friend,” whispered one of the violet-and-gold-eyed creatures.

“Eid-eniyan,” cooed one of the forest green.

“Daughter,” whispered the caramel.

The black creature didn’t say anything, just stared intensely at Amalthea, hatred in those fire-red eyes with their thousand dimensions, the polar opposite of the crystal horn that sat atop its head, dainty and delicate like all the others.

“What are you?”

“Unicorns,” whispered one of the ivory, “Unicorns of the human soul.”

When Hanaver left, Viole stared at the sun for a while, her hands, dress and hair flickering as the gold of her eyes spread up her face in a rippling wave and made her once brown hair a bright shade of gold, and painted her skin temporarily with swirls and eddies of light, leaving a solid gold ring on her pointer finger with a purple amethyst in the center. The heavens opened, and two pale gold figures stepped out of nowhere: a lithe, gentle woman with pale blonde hair and dull yellow eyes like those of a cat, and a man with a faded gold body. Each wore a ring on their finger: one sapphire and one peridot. They looked at Viole softly, and the woman stepped forward, smiling, and touched Viole’s palm, which had not been outstretched before, but was now laid before the woman’s touch, and the man came and laid his hands over the woman’s. Viole gasped as they disappeared in a puff of gold dust, which gravitated toward her and surrounded her, a corona of limitless memories and knowledge, all of which seeped into every bone in her body, and was soon as familiar as the coruscations of the sun. Her gold eyes snapped shut, and her brain traversed galaxies, created worlds, and found truth.

Viole, you did not destroy Sochronn, because it cannot be destroyed. You merely estranged it from this world, forever sealing the Sisters of Destiny off from all they knew before.

I am Ukki, Viole, speaking to you from a place of death, giving you the power to rise as a phoenix from my ashes. Ukkin is an afterlife, yes, but Sochronn is not. 

Sochronn is another alternate world that lays upon ours, the two of our worlds forever kept from the others. Sochronn is known by the gods as the Mother-World, because its stories become reality in these alternate universes. We were the only ones able to connect with it, because of a young girl named Margaret whom we called Destiny in the heavens. Her daughters are no different. You must protect them with your life, Viole, both Amalthea and the one you know as Maroone. I will leave you with a final parting word before you begin your true journey, my phoenix.

Our Mages, in death, are the men of the Mother-World.

After the memories finished washing over her, Ximena continued through the centaur forest, watching as the trees began to thicken, and remembering the words of Advadia Nephage as she crept forward.

A sudden night came over the forest, and Hanaver drew his sword, mindful of the moon shining above this constant bubble of darkness. The creatures began leaping on him from the darkness wherever he stepped, fangs glistening, but he slashed them with his sword and ran through the woods, knowing it was only a short stretch before the end.

Ximena, on the other hand, crept slowly through the undergrowth, trying not to attract the attention of the werewolves. She knew every creeper of the Werewolf Woods like the back of her hand from another time, when her name was not Ximena Bookwell. 

Princess Xanthei Adalice Dorai XVII was once Ximena’s name. She remembered it clearly, like the sound of the church bells you wake up to every morning. She remembered her mother calling her Xanthei, her sister calling her Xanthei, and another voice, too, then more, and more, and more. 

She came to a clearing and halted, swiveling her head. A chorus of twigs began to snap behind her, and dozens of pairs of red eyes stared at her out of the darkness.

The werewolves began leaping upon her, and it was only then that she ran, her head still ringing with the name that was once hers. 

The unicorns led Amalthea through the center of their neat pasture, to a place where a perfectly clear, circular pool sat underneath a trim, neat tree. The black one stayed behind, watching her with its fiery eyes, unblinking. She sat down as they lowered onto their haunches, and she stared at the pool. Suddenly, a billion different memories flashed through her head, of another life in which her name was Princess Anatolia Xoraa Dorai XCIX, and in which her mother was full of life and beauty. She remembered a doorway into nothingness, which her mother led her and her sister through, and then her next memory was being four years old and attending her grandpapa’s funeral, Ximena at her side. She watched that empty doorway over and over again, and watched as Princess Anatolia Xoraa Dorai XCIX left the soul that now occupied Amalthea Bookwell, and as Queen Margaret C. Dorai became Margaret Bookwell again.

Come back to me, my dear, come back to me…

“So you remember now, child?”

The soul-unicorn’s voice was light. Amalthea looked up into those blue eyes, the same colour as hers.

“Yes, I remember.”

“Come with us, Anatolia. Do not forget who you are now, but also do not forget who you were. We never thought that Xoraa was a very fitting middle name for a child so different from all Xoraas we had known before. We know now what your true name is, Princess Anatolia Amalthea Dorai I.”

When the message ended, everything was black, and Viole was surrounded by words.

Viole, hold Xanthei for me. I can handle Anatolia.

You’ll have to watch them while I’m gone.

Goodbye, and thank you.

When she woke up, it was steadily raining all around her, and everything was covered in a grey haze. She was still Viole Lindlach, still in the Plains of Eternity, but the rain fell around her in correspondence with the tears on her cheek. She remembered Amalthea, the friend she had left behind, and the baby Anatolia. She remembered Maroone Ximenlach, and Xanthei nestled in her arms. She remembered watching as Margaret left, having been only eight, and remembering the babies in her arms.  

She remembered crying.

She remembered rain like this.

Our Mages, in death, are the men of the Mother-World.

She remembered Amalthea saying she wasn’t from Advadia, and a tiny, dim corner that Ukki’s brilliant memories had not lit for her became clear, and the light pervaded everything, driving out the darkness..

Maroone was Xanthei.

Amalthea was Anatolia.

And they might not have even known it.

Following the faint haze of memories that laid like a fog over the Werewolf Forest, Ximena ran through the moonlight of the woods, Xanthei, her other self, seeming to guide her as she turned, and remembered the large hollow cave where her mother had continued to raise her, and she began to step lightly as she reached the Willow’s Breath plains, and as they flocked to her. Around her, the fields of purple and pink grass gently swayed in the wind, parting to let the largest of the Willow’s Breaths’ through, a floating wisp spun of air and filled with all the dreams in the world, which were emitting a soft glow.

“Xanthei.”

She was golden, her eyes as blue as Amalthea’s, filled with knowledge.

“It has been a long time since we have seen you. You are younger than you were then.”

“How did you know that I remember, Saki?”

“You forget what we are, Xanthei. Memories are only a different sort of dream.”

Ximena was silent for a while, and she watched as her old cloud-mount floated up to her, and it filled her eyes with tears, as she seemed to be twenty-four again, watching as the world of Advadia Nephage disappeared behind her, and letting her memories swirl off her, taking herself away in layers, until she was a young, dark-eyed child, staring up at her mother, smiling as the world of Earth disappeared into a golden line on the horizon, her blue-eyed sister across from her. She remembered her mother walking home across golden fields of love that sang to her, fields in which she frolicked, researched, practically lived. She turned to her mount and let it carry her off into the golden skies, floated among the pearl-pink clouds of the Willow’s Breaths’ home, feeling the wind whisk through her hair as she mounted the city, and all the world seemed to glow, if only for a moment. Saki looked at her from below, a sweet sadness in her eyes. As the sunset of the outside world faded into night, the cloud-mount drifted downward and the silvery moonlight transformed the secret sky-city of clouds into one of stars. 

The unicorns led Amalthea through the Willow’s Breath plains at the same time that Ximena was swooping through the skies. The moonlight glistened off the grass, making it look golden, and turned them into likenesses of the marbled silver-gold stars in the sky above. The unicorns were silent, their eyes full of wisdom, and a sudden strange sense of freedom rushed over Amalthea as she ran ahead, relishing in this newfound strength and the coolness of the silver night. The unicorns smiled as they ran, following her, their manes rippling like a still pond in which a pebble has been dropped. The stars twinkled above as the unicorns continued to lead Amalthea through the plains, each dainty step an earth-shaking ripple as the ground glowed with their power. 

“Goodbye, daughter.”

“Sister.”

“Friend.”

And then they were gone, like candles blown out in the night, leaving Amalthea to make her own way through this world that she now knew so intimately, with the stars and the moon as her lantern. She climbed up the Griffin Bluffs as she used to with Ximena, or Xanthei. They were the same person, but exact, scientific, yet carefree Ximena seemed so different from wild, majestic Xanthei, the sister Amalthea had once known. As she scaled them, she remembered the proud griffins, the caramel-gold of their feathers as they soared, and their wariness of the Giant Mountains behind them. As Amalthea ran through the bluffs that she knew so well, and curved past the red-rock cliffs where her mother had taught her how to ride a griffin, she continued to ascend, ignoring the fact that she was crossing from the bluffs over to the mountains,  looping past her old home, waking giants as she ran through the night which seemed to be alive, and dashing into the Wraith Kingdom, laughing, as the sun began to rise, and the sky turned golden and purple. The wraiths floated down to greet her, and whispered her name.

“Anatolia.”

“Anatolia.”

“Anatolia.”

Ukki’s ghost led Viole across the plains, and she flew in her starling form, darting against the wind, which soon began to propel her forward as the world obeyed her command. Ukki’s ghost tugged her over the Warvannh Lake, and past the small stretches of plains that ensued, to a great oak tree, where Viole waited. As the sun rose, she looked around for Ukki’s ghost, trying to catch a glimpse, but Viole knew that the ghost was inside her. She watched as the terracotta roofs off the Pirate Piers began to glow with warm light, and people flooded into the cobblestone streets, headed for great oaken ships that rocked in the ocean. She watched as the pirates who had come from overseas crawled out from the belowdecks, watching as the rest of their crew joined them on deck, dressed in cloth and leather. She waited for much time, but did not sleep.

They will come, Ukki whispered.

Just wait, and they will come.

Ximena’s eyes opened to the sunrise over the cloud-city of the Willow’s Breaths, turning everything golden and red. Saki flew to her, and, without words, she led Ximena down to her cloud-mount and away.

“You will find her, Xanthei-bird.”

“Xanthei-bird, you will find happiness in all of the world. Do not fear. We will be with you forever.” Saki smiled then, and she followed Ximena until she left Advadia Nephage. Then, Saki had faded away with Xanthei.

Ximena didn’t speak as the cloud-mount carried her over the rippling golden fields, and into the Dryad Woods, where the lithe figures stepped forward, the susurrations of the trees following them everywhere they walked. They knew her, she could see it in their green eyes, and the magic of the woods followed them, a blue-silver mist that shone heavily around them.

“We have been waiting for you.”

The dryad’s words were like a bell, and she smiled, stepping forward to the front, a blue cedar among pines.

“You are just like your mother was when she came to Advadia Nephage. She knew what the world was, even before it was confirmed.”

“Do you know of the other worlds?” Ximena asked tentatively, stepping forward into the needle-carpeted depths of the forest. Above her, the trees soared into the sky, all heavy pines wearing lacy, weighty skirts of needles similar to the ones that were popular outside Advadia Nephage; her Aunt Lillian had often commented that “This is a new century, Ximena, we’re not living in the Medieval times anymore! That dress is far too antiquated for my liking, but it’s better than that short, shawled catastrophe of your mother’s!”

Hidden in the pockets of the trees were small, dark-eyed birds with blue crests to their heads, referred to as silver cardinals, or more simply silvers in Advadia. Their songs were long and sorrowful, as it was rumoured that “cardinals were the blood of long-extinct birds, and the silvers were their tears, singing their wise sorrow and remembrance to the dryads, who were known spirits of the forest.” 

The dryad in front of her had an earnest smile and a flowing dress of blue cedar. Her eyes, rather than the evergreen of the other dryads, were the colour of the silvers’ feathers, and her irises filled the entire space of her eyes, giving her the appearance of a cedar against her bark-coloured skin.

The birds burst from the trees, and arced across the sky, singing their elegy for the fallen ones.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they, little bird?”

Ximena didn’t respond at first, awed by the way the silvers wielded their wings, as graceful as the dryads.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said uncertainly, still unsure how to approach these strange, wise spirits after spending a year living in their forest with them.

“We know of your world, little bird. It is quite remarkable, you know- despite the razing of trees and destruction of beauty that is to come, your world is still a mother for the others-  a creator of beauty and life. But you do not belong to just one world, do you, little bird?”

Xanthei-bird.

The dryads began to part, a stream of nodding heads and smiles, leading her through the forest, down past clear pools of moonlight and a single birch where a small, pale, dryad-figure wept, silvers gathered on her arms. She looked up as Ximena approached, and flinched.

“Who is this?” she asked in a raspy voice, her eyes all irises and the colour of golden fall leaves. In all her time in the forest, Ximena had never met this dryad before, but knew upon first sight that she was their queen, deflated by the pressure of the throne.

“I have gone by many names.”

Ximena’s answer surprised the dryads, but she continued, weaving a delicate story of words as her mother used to do.

“I have been Maroone Ximenlach, the scientific and quirky Queen of the Mages, and Ximena Bookwell, the disobedient girl who was stranded from her world by a fire who changed her life. I have been Xanthei-bird, the girl on the cloud-mount, friend of the Willows’ Breaths, and the little bird of the dryads, a silver waiting to take flight.”

The dryads were enraptured by her words, especially the queen, whose golden eyes widened as she spoke.

“I have been Xanthei Adalice Dorai, and that is the name I go by now, except I truly do not know who I am. Not yet, anyways.”

The dryad queen watched Ximena, awestruck, as she listed the people she had been, the lives she had lived.

“You are Xanthei Ximena Dorai, my dear, truly and always,” the dryad queen whispered in her raspy voice, “A defiant leader, an intellectual mind if I’ve ever seen one, and you are the Silver Cardinal of the royal family.”

“The Silver Cardinal?” Ximena asked, her eyes lighting up with astonishment.

“Yes. Not only are you the crown princess, someday you will be the greatest leader the humans have ever seen.”

In Advadia, Hanaver was described as the Silver Cardinal, soon to forge a new world and create a new Advadia- “the greatest and strongest  leader that the world had ever seen, yet still brazen and young, looking at the world with the fresh perspective of youth.” 

Ximena looked into the dryad’s eyes to discover they were graying quickly, and soon their light was extinguished. The blue cedar dryad nodded, and the rest of the dryads parted again, but this time they dropped to their knees.

“Silver Cardinal.” They murmured as she walked past, heavy with the loss of the queen she had only begun to know.

The dryads watched as she passed them, one by one, and their eyes were alight with a sort of ancient magic, the exact thing that Ximena felt when she first read Advadia Nephage, sitting under the stars with her mother, the black book sitting on the ground beside them.

“Why are you reading the book to me and not Amalthea, mama?”

Mama smiled, and looked into Ximena’s inquisitive young eyes.

“I shared this book with your father, you know. You are more like him than your sister is.”

She paused for a moment, and gazed off into the distance, lost in memory.

“You have your father’s eyes.”

The woods began to evaporate into golden, glowing plains, a slow hill that climbed up to the golden city before her, the one made of only light, stark against the darkness beyond. She danced among the trees of light, watching as the dryads faded into the silky, unclear distance, and that’s when she began to hear the music, each note clear with a meaning deeper than words, phosphorescent and glowing, in bright, pure voices that sounded like all of music converged into a single melody, woven with others.

And then there was a burst of sudden emotion, a deep seemingly lifelong connection to the music, and the notes came so quickly, they seemed to come from a netherworld of light and peace beyond the lands of Advadia Nephage.

“Welcome, Xanthei Ximena Dorai.”

The words came out of the music, not as lyrics, but as the song itself, every corner of Ximena described so clearly by the notes that she knew they were talking to her in their own way.

They were most certainly the Urahinn, the spirits of light that gave Viole her power from the heavens, that gave all the Mages their power.

“You have your own powers too, Xanthei, do not forget that. Powers that will forge another world someday- a world birthed of Advadia Nephage, not the Mother-World.

“A world that will change all worlds forever.”

Amalthea didn’t remember sleeping, but the sun was setting once more when she awoke. The wraiths, their grey robes swishing, gathered around her.

“You must leave, Anatolia. You know the lands now, and you know yourself. Follow the wind to the Pirate Cove. There lies your destiny.”

The winds whispered to Amalthea, and led her out of the ghostly woods of the Wraith Kingdom, out of the fingers of trolls beginning to stir for the night, dancing on the rocky hills, not afraid, brave as the wind carried her, down, down, down to the soft golden grass of the Aerylbryh Plains, watching as the not-yet born danced down to her, glowing with golden light. Amalthea wondered who these people would be- and she saw how they were getting slowly younger, younger, younger, until they came out the other end into life and birth, going from their eldest age- the age they would live to- to their youngest age, when they will die as Aerylbryh and become human, Mage, pirate, or pixie, mermaid or centaur or unicorn, whatever they were destined to become.

Between the teachings of Mama, Viole, and Ximena, she had scrounged up a variety of Aerylbryh information in her head. Before any creature in Advadia was born, they would be born as an Aerylbryh at the age they would live to, and would de-age second by second, until they would evaporate and be born somewhere else in the world, and yet all Aerylbryh appeared not as their birth-forms but as half-formed souls, using their lives as Aerylbryh to develop into full souls and ready themselves to occupy a body. 

Many Aerylbryh flickered into existence as Amalthea walked among them, some frightfully young, all silent, golden forms in gowns that slowly mended their own tears as time passed, robes of velvet that grow more immaculate, overalls that seem to clean themselves, or small dresses fit for children, for there are Aerylbryh children, either close to their life, or destined to live a short one. They followed Amalthea, a golden trail to her gown, between the world of the living and the dead, delivering her to the green-grass plains, then flying off, autumn leaves lost on the breeze. She followed the wind still, weaving across the green-grass, moving incredibly fast until the sun set, and the magic of the breeze laid her to a short rest on a hill-top under a tree where a gold-breasted starling was perched in a nest of twigs, allowing her body to collapse into sleep.

Viole watched as the Aerylbryh gathered at the edge of their plains, then flew off, dancing gold flickers on the wind that seemed to blow towards the Pirate Cove below her. A figure in tattered clothes, moving at an inhuman speed and following the wind, was dashing towards her tree as the sun set on Viole’s second day. She had summoned a nest on the first night, where she rested, waiting for the night.

The blond-haired girl grew closer and closer, and Ukki’s ghost, a wispy white dove inside Viole’s mind, said only, “Wait for the other, my phoenix. Do not show yourself to her yet.”

It was Amalthea, and Viole’s every instinct screamed to approach her, but she was soon fast asleep. Viole did not have to ask any questions of Ukki, for she knew the secrets of the world. 

“The wraiths’ magic has taken much out of the girl. She will sleep for nearly two days, and her dreams will be of utmost importance. You must protect her, my phoenix, until the other arrives.”

Viole drew a golden wall around her hill, phosphorescent and shimmering, strengthened by the power that flowed through her veins.

“Sleep now, my phoenix. The barrier will stay, do not fear. I will show you what you must do in the days ahead.”

A patrol of Urahinn soldiers accompanied Ximena through the jagged scoria spires of the Gorrghinn Abyss, where creatures made of shadows communicate through a harsh, simplistic language explained in A Guide to the World of Advadia Nephage in sibilant voices. The Gorrghinn whispered from the shadows, and attacked with rough rock blades, broken against the gold-woven shields of the Urahinn, who gave orders with sweet, gentle song with a tint of urgency to it. The soldiers wove through the Gorrghinn lands, and at the border to the encircling Dryad Woods, they sang a sweet goodbye song, full of meaning.

“Head to the Pirate Cove, Xanthei-bird. You will find your sister- and your destiny- there.”

In a matter of seconds, Ximena was once more surrounded by the giant pine trees of the woods, their limp green tendrils of needle-filled branches draping down over the path, which featured tree-root stairs with lichen nestled under them. A golden-leafed, strong tree stood apart from the others, and, across from it, a dark, leafless tree nestled in a cove of branches, with twig-thin red saplings sprouting from the ground around it. 

She advanced onto the plains, green and empty, and skirted the Aerylbryh kingdom, coming to rest under a tree at sunset beside the Mermaid Lake, a willow draping over the water. The blue-scaled creatures began to sing from beneath the water, trying to lure Ximena in, but the only place they lured her was the land of dreams.

“Amalthea, are you here?”

A voice out of the blackness startled Amalthea.

Golden eyes slowly emerged, and Viole stepped forward.

“This is the land of dreams. I am to watch over you while you sleep, but also guide your dreams so that you can see the truth in them.”

“If I’m dreaming, then this isn’t real.”

“No, Amalthea, this is real.”

A loud voice boomed out of the darkness with clarity, followed by a barrage of images.

“Through darkness, with light, she travels,

And o’er green fields the cockatiel shall fly,

Wait for the truth to unravel,

For your magic, the time is nigh.”

Tall spires of rock, green plains, a flash of black hair, and a pen.

And, slowly, the images began to change. Scribbling furiously. Detailed images, wrought from pen and ink. The voice starts again, accompanied by the drawings.

“All pink and lace and well-behaved-”

A woman dressed in lace, sitting at a table with a friend, laughing, drawn on rough parchment.

“Made, it seems, to be a good girl and obey-”

A young girl curtsying and blushing.

“Ancient stories beckon, whisper-”

Viole, drawn on a page emerging from a book with another girl beside her.

“Lost, soon, with a fiery flicker-”

The outline of Advadia Nephage against smoldering flames, the outline of a girl in the background.

“Tales unwind at the mocking-bird’s touch-”

A girl sitting at a desk, furiously scribbling.

“Her eyes so blue and her hair so lush-”

A picture of a rosy-cheeked girl, smiling.

“Ever changed by this new world around her-”

Two girls side by side, one ramrod-straight with a polite expression, the other brave, free.

“Advadia Nephage, o stories, surround her.”

Pages flying around the girl as she stares out a window.

But the pictures are not just of any girl. 

They are all drawings of Amalthea.  

Viole watched as the drawings of Amalthea flitted by. Amalthea was standing there in the midst of it all, and-

Ukki’s ghost yanked her out of the land of dreams.

“There is somewhere else we must go, little phoenix. Something else we must do.”

“But-” Viole looked back at Amalthea.

“Your magic will protect her. Now, fly with me, my phoenix.”

Viole and Ukki dashed through the air at an inhuman speed, before coming to a halt in front of a village that made her heart throb. It was her village, once. She dropped into her human form and strode forward, Ukki telling her what to do.

“Tell them that you need to pick your heir. Tell them to raise their palms to the sky all at once.”

“Mages!”

Viole’s voice rang out, and they turned to look at her.

“I am your queen, and the time has come for me to pick my heir. Now, all of you, raise your palms to the sky!”

Viole made her way towards the flicker of purple in the crowd, and crowned her heir, Lady Indige Marilach. 

“You cannot lead the Mages, my phoenix,” Ukki’s ghost whispered as they flew back to the tree under which Amalthea slept, “You must watch over all of Advadia. It is not your place to be a queen anymore. You have grown far beyond that.”

Ximena was surrounded by blurred sounds and shapes as she awoke. Mermaids were twined around her legs, singing her to death with a familiar song- an Urahinn melody, twisted by their eerie voices.

Ximena pushed against the water to find herself hitting ice. The white-blue Mermaid Lake froze completely at random, as it was situated in northern Advadia, where the temperatures fluctuated greatly from one day to the next. She used her ever-useful boot to crack open the ice and gasp in fresh air, clear and crisp with the winds of the Troll Mountains, before scrabbling onto the icy surface, away from the fingers of the mermaids, and scurrying off to the golden-grass shores, watching as her body made bubbles shaped like jellyfish bloom beneath the ice. She ran as fast as she could to the southeast, before approaching a large round cave protruding from the ground, surrounded by a cerulean lake where translucent creatures of water battled ice-crystal-formed people. The Ysson of ice snarled viciously, but the Warvannh of water watched carefully as Ximena approached, and it was a rain-coloured Warvannh that spoke first.

“You have fire in your soul, child. Fire and squid’s ink.”

The other Warvannh were enraptured in the battle, and they were trying their hardest to fend off the spears of the Ysson, but they were falling left and right, dissolving into the water. The rain-coloured Warvannh was about to speak again, but the spear of a tall Ysson formed of frost dug straight through him, his mouth still open. The Ysson grinned, advancing towards Ximena. The last handful of Warvannh gathered around her, water-brows knitted. Ximena watched as, in a second, the Ysson wasted all his energy on a pointless war, and she had a vision of what could come to pass- Warvannh in the Ysson cave, and Yssonian explorers diving beneath the waters of the Warvannh lake, white-stemmed reeds and river grasses with soft bristles flowing gently in the wind. The Warvannh melted him with gentle streams of water, but there were too many Ysson, swarming them all around. Ximena hit one with her boot, which she was still clutching, and she watched as the Warvannh’s numbers diminished to only, five, four, three...

“STOP!”

The scream that erupted from Ximena was not her own, and it made the Warvannh and Ysson stop what they were doing and stare. It was earthly, worldly. 

You have fire in your soul, child. Fire and squid’s ink.

The scream sent her running, running across the plains to the tree where Amalthea lay, and past there, to the Pirate Cove as the sun began to set.

The sun was red on the water when Amalthea awoke, staining it the colour of blood. The sky around the sun was a miasma of gold and ochre, the colour of Viole’s eyes from the dream. She made her way down to the Pirate Cove, watching as a figure streaked towards it, running from the northwest. There was something familiar about the figure; its movement reminded Amalthea of cornstalks, its shape of the musty smell of Mama’s old books and witty remarks. Amalthea followed it gradually down into the cobbled roads of the Pirate Cove, tracing its steps as a hunter would track a deer. She could predict its movements, and follow its snaking trail of fury and rage, which reminded her of flames, trickling down the back of Aunt Charlotta’s house, and the touch of cold flesh as Grandmama slipped away from her forever… She was trying to puzzle out who the figure was when a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her through the street. She kicked and screamed, but the pirate handled her with ease, clapping a hand over her mouth and slinging her over his shoulder. The pirate was dressed all in black leather, unlike the other colourfully clothed men that swarmed the streets, and elicited a murmur of fear from the people around him as the crowd parted like minnows in the wake of a great white shark. Amalthea looked and saw the figure from the field across from her, held in place with sturdy pirate hands, but her face was in the shadows and Amalthea didn’t get a chance to get a better look, for they were loaded onto a ship and tucked away into darkness. Before Amalthea even had a chance to breathe, however, the boat burst into flames, and in their orange-yellow light she saw Ximena, watching her, her brown eyes bright. She hugged her sister, tears spilling out of her eyes, and she squeezed all the air out of Ximena, who merely grinned. Her sister had changed so much, but underneath was still the maggot-studying scientist, who rebelled from the rules of society and forged her own reality. They didn’t have to speak, as their separation had brought them closer together, and for now, all Amalthea wanted was the comforting grip of her sister, who was for an unexplainable reason clutching a soggy boot that dug into her back. She relaxed into her sister’s grip as they were swept up into the air, letting the calm relief of their strange, quick reunion wash over her as they swooped through the sky on the back of a massive glowing phoenix.

Viole flew through the air, her massive wings flapping, Amalthea and Maroone atop her back.

My phoenix.

Ukki’s ghost was no longer with her. She had evanesced the moment Viole took her phoenix form, smiling.

“Be well, my phoenix. You know what you must do.”

The flames from her wings flew out into the night, leaving a glowing trail behind her in the sky like a shooting star as she flew towards the Human Kingdom, bending time to her will as she wrenched the sun upwards, watching as pink tinted the horizon and flying ever onwards, the girls on her back in awe as the stars winked out one by one and a new day begun with the human princesses’s arrival in their home kingdom.

As the sun rose surprisingly quickly, the marble towers of the Human Kingdom loomed beyond Amalthea and Ximena. Their phoenix mount landed on the ground, gold eyes glinting, and became a gold-eyed Viole.

“Viole?” whispered Amalthea.

“Yes, Amalthea. It’s me.”

The two embraced, and Ximena looked on awkwardly as they pulled apart.

“So, Amalthea, what’d I miss?”

Before she could speak a word, Hanaver emerged from the gates of the castle.

“Anatolia? Xanthei?”

In unison, the two sisters said “Yes, father, it’s us.”

From behind Hanaver emerged a familiar shape, but instead of shy, bookish Margaret Bookwell, it was Margaret C. Dorai, Queen of the Humans, who greeted them.

“Mama!” the sisters exclaimed.

“As I said- nothing is just a story, Amalthea, and you’d do well to remember it.” 

Humans and Mages alike poured onto the terraced fields, all bowing. Perle emerged, along with Indige Marilach, and both of them bent low to Viole.

“Now then, I think that there is a ceremony we must attend to,” said Mama, smiling.

“Yes, indeed,” said Hanaver, “And the first part is the merging of the worlds.”

Viole focused all of her energy into cutting through the delicate web between Advadia Nephage and the Mother-World. Slowly, the gap began to emerge, a gateway into the living room of the Bookwell house, Ximena’s copy of Medicinal Antidotes I still sitting on the table.

“All of the Mages here who have lost a loved one- a male loved one, to specify- have a choice. You may choose to live with the pain of their loss- or you can find them again in this new world. And though it may be difficult to break their bubble, they will remember you, and you can live the life you never had with them in a new world,” Viole called out to the Mages. Immediately, a stream of those once called Staerbrenn raced forward through the portal. 

Perle was among them, and she stepped forward into the Bookwells’ house to find a group of bewildered women standing in the center.

“Good heavens! What is going on?” proclaimed a tall, thin woman with a strict face known to Amalthea and Ximena as Aunt Astrid.

A toad-like woman in a preposterous magenta silk dress collapsed to the ground, while a demure young woman kept her child close. But her child, a boy named Henri, burst from his mother’s grip upon seeing his true Mage mother, for he now remembered his old life as a Mage boy.

“Mama Perle?”

“Yes, Arturo. I’m here.”

Light-haired Charlotta gasped and clapped a hand to her heart.

“Stop playing pretend with these-these- people, Henri, and-”

“My name is not Henri, Charlotta,” he said, gazing with those rain-blue eyes that Perle loved so dearly.

“And I am not playing pretend.”

Back in the Human Kingdom, Amalthea and Ximena stepped forward to their father.

“Anatolia Amalthea Dorai, do you pledge yourself as a Princess of the Humans and a Leader of the Mage-Human Union for all of your lifetime?”

In that moment, Amalthea- now Anatolia- cast off the last remainders of the polite girl who adhered to the rules. Margaret, at Hanaver’s side, beamed with pride.

“I do,” she said, and in those words, she showed every ounce of strength, memory, and triumph that she had earned over her adventures through Advadia, “I do.”

“And, Xanthei Ximena Dorai, do you pledge yourself as a Princess of the Humans and a Leader of the Human-Mage Union for all of your lifetime?”

Ximena, who was now Xanthei, clutched her science kit and still-wet boot that she was not wearing, and nodded once.

“I do.”

Soon, Anatolia and Xanthei were lost in the crowd of celebratory humans and Mages alike, and a hand slipped a raven’s feather pen wrapped in paper into Anatolia’s pocket.

Anatolia slipped away from the crowd and unwrapped the pen. On the paper read:

Dear Anatolia,

Your soul is water with a raven’s feather afloat on it, while your sister’s is fire and squid’s ink. Together, not alone, you will forge a new world.

With this pen, you have all that you need.

-N.

Amalthea closed her hand around the quill and smiled. Xanthei, Hanaver, Margaret, Viole, and even Indige, the newly crowned Queen of the Mages, stood together and watched the sun set on the golden Plains of Eternity beyond, and at that moment, all of Advadia was at peace, even the Urahinn and Gorrghinn and the Funkle and the mushroom-trees, for three new leaders were crowned on that day- leaders that would change the world- and create a new one.

The End