Far to the west, on the opposite side of the forest from the eruption that had happened at the old site of the fey capital, the great tree which supported the transported city now rested atop a gaping crater. This crater was known as the heaven scar, a great gaping hole in the ground carved out by an event known as the heaven fall. An event that made the fiery eruption at the old site of the capital look like a candle flame by comparison. An event so cataclysmic that it had rattled the very foundation of the world.

The fey capital had been situated here, partially covering the great pit bored into the ground by the heaven fall, for the past two years. The colossal tree was now suspended over the hole like the pupil of an eye. The tree and the city that was built on the clump of dirt that it had taken with it were suspended over the hole by the massive roots jutting out to be embedded in the rocky wall of the scar.

The great tree itself served as the royal palace, and the dwelling place of the queen of all fey. The great fey dragon Oren. The upper branches, also known as the crown of the tree, served as the audience chamber.

On this day, the fey court was gathered within this ‘throne room’ at the top of the tree.

Said throne was not a throne at all, as the draconic queen did not appear in a humanoid form. Rather, said throne was simply a single large branch of the tree, around which the serpentine dragon queen coiled and surveyed the court before her.

The crown of the tree was so expansive that a normal human eye would not be able to clearly see any humanoid creature easily. Even so far as the next branch over, anything the size of a human would look like a mere ant.

The ability to maintain self-propelled flight was almost a requirement to participate in a meeting of the fey court. As such, the court was entirely dominated by 3 races. Great fairies, fey dragons, and the occasional regular dragon of the Basmu lineage. Of these three, the fey dragons held the highest position, and were also the most easily visible from across the court.

Among these gathered members of the fey nobility, there was a thick and palpable tension. It was not common for the court to gather in full in this way. Along with the queen, the heads of all six of the comitties of the fey court were present, as well as the entirety of the upper rank members in each. Every last draconic member of any given division of the fey court was here, along with the majority of the great fairies.

There was a hum of spiritual speech being excthanged from one fey noble to another. Along with possessing flight, the ability to regularly spare the spiritual energy for spiritual communicating was also minimum requirement to standing among the fey nobility. This was the true dividing line between those who could be in the court and who could not. While lacking the ability to fly made things inconvenient, lacking the ability to communicate spiritually would make it impossible to communicate across the distances involved with this space.

This is the reason why they fey had started calling communication with the spirit the ‘courtly speech.’

The din of spiritual noise quieted down as a single fey dragon hovered forward from the civics committee. Being of the Basmu line, as were the overwhelming majority of all the dragons here to the inclusion of the queen, he had a long serpentine form. Being a member of the fey in addition to this, he also had a dazeling pair of feathery wings which radiated with rainbow light. It would be an awe inspiring sight just to see a single fey dragon of the Basmu line, but in this environment of trees large enough to hold an entire human city and a court filled with many others exactly like him, these features lost some of the splendor that might be present in any other space.

The handling of proceedings for official functions like this always fell to the civics committee. As such, an official from that division moving forward was a sign to everyone that proceedings were about to start.

He hovered out to a position that was near the center, but still slightly off-set in the direction of the section designated for the civics committee to which he belonged. Once he was in position, he immediately began projecting words via pure spirit energy that could be heard by everyone present.

‘Ladies and Lords of the fey! The great queen of the eastern forest thanks you for assembling quickly in light of the recent developments. Please be calm so we might bring this meeting to order.’

‘As many of you know by now, a column of fire was spotted from the direction of the former site of the capital. Shortly after, a greater red fire dragon of the Basmu line was spotted flying from the site toward the south. It would appear that the traitor Neruu has broken from the binding that imprisoned him.’

‘This is not all.’ The dragon kept speaking. ‘A scant few moments after the escape of Neruu, the fire bird that the guardian of the south had gifted to the queen millenia ago, very suddenly burst into flames and turned to ash.’

There was a sudden eruption of spiritual static as tense emotions were carried without restraint over the leaking psychic energy. Some understood the significance of this statement all too well. Meanwhile, others did not, and only found it strange that such unusual circumstances would line up together with one another, failing to see how the two were connected.

‘Excuse me.’ One of the nobles of the defense committee spoke up. ‘Most noble queen. Please forgive me for speaking out of turn, but I must direct a question toward Lord Desaka.’

A head large enough to dominate and loom over even the expansive space within the crown of the great tree nodded in response to this request from the fey noble. Even such a simple action by the colossal draconic queen of the fey was enough to shift the air currents and toss about the flight-dependent nobility gathered here should she move too quickly. As such, it was with an exercise in restraint that she kept the action slow and just minimal enough to be clearly seen and understood.

The noble in question nodded back in appreciation, and then turned to the official of the civics committee to address him directly. ‘Lord Desaka. On the subject of the fire bird, I believe there are many of us here who are unaware of the significance behind this death, and who thought the bird to be a mere curiosity of a pet. While it is clear there is more to it than that, I believe it may be important that those unaware are informed of the meaning behind the death of such a significant creature.’

‘I will address this question.’ The queen herself spoke up with a voice reverberating over the people in a gentle yet overwhelmingly powerful wave. ‘In the age before the world was abandoned by the gods, it was believed the fire bird was an avatar of ruin. As the bird aged, the world slowly begins to collapse around us. When this coming disaster has reached a height, the fire bird will die in it’s own flames. At this time, the ruin will be effectively complete. All the decay and the cracks will have formed, and there will be one single momentous event immediately following this death which truly signals the height of this ruin.’

The shock from this statement was great enough that the gasp that rippled through the court could be easily heard even without the aid of it being projected via the courtly speech.

The noble who had been speaking, however, simply nodded. He knew all of this before hand, but had merely asked the question rhetorically for the benefit of the rest of the court. However, he was left in an uncomfortable position at this point. This was not all he wished to have revealed in regards to the fire bird, and now he had to address the queen directly instead of addressing the questions to a mere functionary of the court.

‘Then, forgive me for this act of presumptuousness my queen, but I must ask a further question.’ He said cautiously. ‘Can I beg that you please tell the court why it is, then, that you accepted this creature that some might see as a curse upon this land?’

‘This is an easy question to answer.’ The queen announced. ‘I had said it was believed once that the fire bird was an avatar of ruin. Today we have come to learn that ruin is not the concept this creature represents at all. Rather, it is an avatar of eras. And, should one be gifted to a ruler, the health of that fire bird represents the health of the kingdom. As such, it is not the bird which causes the ruin. Rather, it is the ruin which causes the fire bird to age, and then to finally die the moment the ruin becomes irrevocable.’

The psychic space in the room immediately lit up with the panicked voices of the lesser nobles upon hearing this announcement. Where the greater nobles had more tact and discipline, they did not reprimand the lower nobles. Most of them shared the sentiments of those subordinated to them.

‘Do you mean to say that Neruu is going to destroy the kingdom?!’ One voice from the crowd suddenly shouted out, directed at the defense committee member who had been questioning the queen.

However, it was the queen who answered this question instead. ‘It means simply what I said. There will be something disasterous in the near future, and it will shake the very foundations of this kingdom. Perhaps it will indeed be Neruu to originate this, or perhaps it will not. It can also be an event originating from the very unrest we see in this court stirred up by the commotion over the escape of this traitor.’

‘Now then,’ Lord Desaka, the official of the civics committee, spoke up before the court could erupt into disorder once again. ‘Since everyone is now well acquainted with the significance of what the death of a fire bird belonging to the queen represents, I believe we should all now focus the requisite attention on the matter at hand. It means that there will be so much more to come of this event than merely the escape of the traitor, and we must now consider everything that might herald the coming disaster in the near future. With this in mind, the court is now open to discussion.’

‘How is it that he escaped in the first place?!’ Someone spoke up, asking the obvious question.

‘Unknown.’ The defense committee official announced. ‘The defense committee has dispatched investigators, but we have yet to hear word back from them.’

‘What of the outworlders who were bound there? Could they have been destroyed when Neruu escaped?’ Another individual asked.

‘This is unknown at this time. However, I cannot see a way that mere faries, even of that much power, could survive the fire of a greater red dragon.’

‘There was a report that a rogue outworlder was attempting to free them, though. The very same one who stole an asset being nurtured by this court, no less. Perhaps that audacious individual could even be related to this!’

‘How would he free them? They were bound by the remnant roots of the great tree, given life and commanded by the words of the queen. There is no force that could have more authority than that command, and the power of the outworlders is far from what one would need to break those bonds.’

‘There were guards left to watch the outworlders, were there not? They should have seen what happened. Why are they not here to report?’

‘The guards were all fairies. They do not have the speed to cross the forest in this time!’

‘They may not be as fast as dragons, but they can still fly with the speed of the wind. They really should be here by now!’

Words were shouted back and forth across the court as they debated the implications of these events and how best to proceed. Hearing that the events thus far were a mere precursor had them all rattled.

Since the heaven fall, there had been a dramatic increase in demon activity. Many elven villages had been completely wiped out. They did not merely stop at destroying the villagers. They even went on to uproot and make off with all the trees in the village. It was an unprecedented escalation in the usual tactics. They had yet to even figure out how it was even being done. Not even a stray leaf was left. They’d thought at first the trees must have been burned, but there was not even a sign of ash left behind, and not a single root left in the ground.

They had only realized too late that the targeted villages were always those that had celebrated recent births. And not all of them were targeted either. It was only when this information was combined with a report from the seventh committee that they figured out the targeted villages were those likely to have taken a human born with an outworlder soul from a nearby human village.

Everywhere they turned, it was appearing that these outworlders were going to play a major role in this new approaching era that would soon supplant the old. This made these assets the queen was raising all the more important, and thus all the more galling that one had been stolen.

This was so upsetting to them that the mere thought of the thief potentially playing a part in the most recent incident had many calling for the other assets left with the Hidan to be retrieved as soon as possible.