Two steaming hot cups rested between Seren and I, carefully nestled within the pile of blankets that we were resting on. Technically, they were Fluminix’s, but the dragon in question didn’t seem to mind; she herself resting her head on my lap and enjoying my absentminded strokes over her scales.

The sun had yet to set by the time we made our way back to my balcony, having made a quick tea theft trip into Eweleanor’s apartment.

Maybe I ought to stock up on my own?

Not important right now.

What was a pleasant surprise, was that we had managed to make the trip within a single day. Most of the time, it takes me at least a week to get back. Mainly because I tended to take the scenic route back, leaving my ride behind.

Hence why Seren was so insistent on tagging along. She had apparently heard more than just who I really was, having come to learn of my bad habit of forgetting to return the animals I borrowed.

Anyway, we had been sitting here for almost an hour now, watching the sun slowly start to make its dip below the horizon, without saying a single word to one another.

It was honestly making me even more antsy about all of this than I already was.

“Soooo,” I drawled as I picked up my cup and rested my head back against the wall. “You wanted me to explain things?”

“And you said you would,” she replied sharply, as she picked up her own cup before sipping from it.

I sighed, nursing my tea instead of drinking it. “Where would you like me to start?”

She remained silent for an uncomfortable long moment. “How about why you lied to me?”

I winced and lowered my cup to Fluminix’s head. “I… technically didn’t lie.”

Even without looking her way, I could feel the heat of the glare she gave me.

“Okay, I lied,” I quickly amended. “I kept the truth from you, because it made me comfortable. That’s it. No mischief or ill-will intended.”

“You still wound up hurting me,” she said softly, in-between sips. “You made a fool out of me.”

I let out a long breath as my gaze drifted down towards my cup on Fluminix’s head. “I really should have told you, huh?”

“You should have,” she stated in agreement.

I hazarded a glance towards her, finding her looking at the setting sun, lost in her own thoughts. “Tell me honestly, would our time together have been the same, if I had?”

Her brows pulled closer as she thought. “Probably not.”

I picked up my cup with a soft, little huff. “Which was why I couldn’t find it in me to tell you. I wanted you to know me, not the known version of me.”

Silence fell over the both of us, as we both lost ourselves in our thoughts and teas.

“What did you mean, when you said they could kill you earlier?” Seren asked suddenly with some hesitancy.

“Huh?” I uttered, being just a tad too slow to process the sudden question. “Oh, I was pretty much all out mana. I had just barely enough to keep my body, mostly, standing. So, I had nothing left to defend myself with.”

“Oh…” was all she uttered in return, as the air filled with tension.

“Do you regret it?” I asked carefully.

“Helping you get away?” she asked, to which I nodded. After another too-long-a pause, she mumbled the unexpected, “…No, I don’t…”

I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I drank from my empty cup, because this could only mean one thing: she still cared.

“Why did you run out of mana?” she asked hesitantly. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t,” I answered honestly with a smile. “I ran out of mana, because I took on more than I could, essentially.”

She regarded me critically. “Did you really aid those crusaders? Or…?”

I let out a subdued, thoughtful hum as I closed my eyes. “What do you think I did? Honestly.”

A long silence had me fearing the worst, before she said, “…I think you would help anyone, regardless of what they might think of you. At least, that’s what the part of me that got to know you as, you know, you tells me. My faith wants me to believe otherwise.”

“Just for the record, they are called mujahideen in those parts of the world,” I corrected her on what she said earlier.

She sighed heavily. “Just tell me the truth already.”

“The truth is complex, and beholden to perspective,” I said, before quickly continuing to intercept a well-deserved reprimand. “I did aid them. I gave them the extra strength and protections needed to make their task easier and safer. However, as you probably overheard, they were all too happy to attribute those things to Sola.

“Which happens every single time I run into its holy warriors when out on a job, I like to add.”

“So, then what was that purple spell for?” she asked critically. “Assuming that was yours. It gave me some very ominous feelings.”

“That’s soul magic for you,” I said with a soft snort. “For some reason, it gives nearby souls a troubled vibe. At least, when used offensively. It reeks of wrongness.

“As for the spell’s purpose, well… that’s going to be hard for you to believe, I think…”

“Tell me anyway,” she demanded.

I exhaled deeply. “I was contesting Nox’s will, as it had shackled the souls of the revenants to its will. And through it, it let the lich believe they were his to command.”

“Nox? As in the dark god Nox?” she asked sceptically. “You expect me to believe a god had descended onto the battlefield, without anyone noticing? And you, what? Defeated him?”

I snorted, halfway between a laugh and derision. “Oh, I never stood a snowball’s chance of defeating it. No-one on the material plane could, and no-one from the astral plane cares to. Not even Sola, believe me.”

It earned me a withering glare, but I didn’t care, as it was the truth, and she wanted the truth.

“The so-called ‘gods’ are nothing but immensely powerful spirits, called deity-spirits,” I explained. “Unlike other spirits, who appear as distorted humanoids or animals in the material plane, deity-spirits are invisible. Even to the soul-viewing-goggles we have here at the school, as they are for viewing things tied to souls or possessing souls. Spirits aren’t souls, and deity-spirits can’t be bound.”

“And I’m just supposed to believe that you are someone who just happens to be able to see something no-one else can see?” she asked dubiously.

“Yes,” I answered honestly.

“I thought I told you to tell me the truth,” she bit back.

I swiftly turned to face her with a glare, causing my exhausted head to swim a little. “Not a single word I’ve said today has been a lie. Why do you think it’s so damn hard for me to tell people these kinds of things?

“And for the record, I’m not the only one who can see them,” I said more calmly as I turned my gaze back to the mostly set sun. “Dragons can see them as well, after a certain age. Of which there are about a dozen or so alive at the moment, including the dragon monarchs.”

She just kept silently staring at me, sceptically.

“Look,” I said with a sigh. “You’re just going to have to believe me on that. There’s no other way around it. I can’t make you see that which you aren’t able to. It’s just not possible, I’ve tried.”

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, she acquiesced, nodding her acceptance in the end. Not that she was fully convinced, but that was to be expected.

“Okay, so, assuming you did battle a god, what happened?” she asked. “I noticed you were a bit out of it since the start of the battle, just staring blankly off into the distance. Presumably where Nox was?”

I nodded, before looking a bit sheepish. “I, uh, almost completely abandoned my body… I needed every scrap of mana I had, and since, as a lich, I control my body with mana, I pulled it out of my body and kept it in my soul to be thrown at the deity-spirit out of defiance.

“Seriously, there’s a reason why liches created by sacrificing one’s brain were idiotic morons. Without the brain, one would exist primarily in the astral. And being little more than a floating blob doesn’t make for level-headed thinking.

“Especially not in the presence of a deity-spirit, they are so massive that they envelop you and drown you out. Which, uh… made me lose myself there for a moment, to be honest.”

Seren sighed as I stopped speaking. “The more you tell me, the more outlandish it all feels. Honestly, if I hadn’t gotten to know you before I learned all of this, I probably would have called you insane and made sure I never saw you again...

“Even with knowing you, I feel the urge to do so, if I’m being honest.”

Despite feeling stupidly hopeful at hearing she hasn’t dismissed what she learned about me before learning that I had deceived her about my past, I let her be, to take it all in.

“Why did he leave?” she asked eventually. “Nox, I mean. Assuming he did leave.”

I snorted a humourless laugh. “I haven’t a clue. I never do with those fuckers. They come. They do whatever they came to do. Sometimes I challenge them, sometimes they want me to play something akin to a children’s game, sometimes I just annoy them, sometimes they leave on their own without my interference.

“Really, all seven of them are a right pain to deal with.”

She snorted cutely. “A children’s game?”

I frowned at the last rays of today’s sunlight. “It’s not that funny. Sometimes those games include real people.”

“Sorry,” she said, and I knew she meant it.

I nodded and let out an appreciative hum. “Now, as much as I love talking about my vast knowledge of powerful beings, their antics and my magical prowess, I believe we have something more important to talk about?”

“Something more important than battling a god?” she asked teasingly.

I rolled my eyes. “I just want to explain my side of the story. If you’ll allow me. Not to excuse anything I did, but simply to tell it. I promise to respect your feelings towards me. No matter what those might be.”

She was silent for what felt like nearly an hour, before finally saying, “Alright, I’ll hear you out.”

I let out a breath of relief. “Okay, so I suppose I ought to begin at the beginning. At the very beginning, that is?”

She nodded, so I continued, “In that case, what do you know about the founding myth of the Vesperan Empire?”

She blinked in confusion. “Um, nothing? Why? What does that have to do with you?”

“Because,” I started slowly. “It is a myth that has defined me since birth, and the fate of Vespera since its founding days.”

“Still doesn’t explain how it’s tied to you,” she rightfully pointed out.

I sighed and got up with a slight stumble; the action causing Fluminix to move her head over to the blanket next to where I sat. “That’s fair. And I suppose I ought to properly introduce myself, shouldn’t I?”

I gave her a proper, respectful bow one would give to someone of a higher station these days. “Morgana Tutana Gloriana, former Empress of the Vesperan Empire, its last ruler, at your service.”

Seren looked slightly taken aback, but not all that surprised. Which was understandable, since she had already come to learn I was an empress once upon a time.

I sat back down with a chuckle. “Never introduced myself as such whilst bowing to someone before.”

She smiled despite still looking confused. However, she still acquiesced with a nod and settled in comfortably, knowing full well how I got whenever I told a story.

“A long, long time ago, long before I was born, in a time when people were shitty with keeping accurate records so the exact year and date have actually been forgotten. Not that it stopped my ancestors from basing our calendar on that very date.

“Whatever, not important,” I said irritably, as I waved my hand dismissively. “Before Vespera became Vespera, there was a small village on the other side of the river, roughly where Paideia’s village nowadays rests. In the village, two sisters were born.

“The eldest was a woman named Vespera, whose hair was like the last rays of light of the day, dark auburn. The youngest was named Aurora, having, aptly, hair that resembled the first rays of light of the day. Though, that was not where their differences ended.

“Vespera grew up a determined warrior, willing to do anything to keep her village safe from the monsters that ruled the lands when night fell. Aurora was softer, gentler, offering the villagers words of comfort and hope when the fallen were counted each morning.

“Now, granted, my stance and interpretation of this myth have changed over the centuries,” I interrupted my own tale. “Especially in the latter millennium, I’ve… mellowed out a bit.

“Anyway, this was a time of calamity, where humanoids were hanging on by a thread. The village where Vespera and Aurora grew up in wasn’t the only to suffer from the dominance the beasts held.

“In fact, they weren’t even close to being the worst off. Refugees of distant villages often trickled into the village, having barely been able to escape the destruction of their villages. Whilst this influx helped Vespera bolster the number of defenders the village could muster, they still lost at least one person each night, and the beasts were only getting more and more ferocious.

“One of these refugees was a man that Vespera quickly grew fond of, and even married a couple of years later. A man named Nox.”

“Wait, wait,” Seren interrupted hastily. “Nox, as in Nox Nox?”

 “Nox, as in the so-called god Nox, yes,” I said with a nod. “Granted, it is merely the mythological deity, not the actual deity-spirit. No-one in my time believed it to have been anything other than a man that the name was attributed to, or a man to which the deity was attributed to.

“At least, those within Vespera’s elite didn’t believe it to have been the actual deity-spirit. The commoners, especially those outside of the heartland where the gods were widely revered, probably did see it as being Nox the deity-spirit having taken human form.

“To make it even more complicated, there is a version of the myth that claims that both Vespera and Aurora were sired by Nox disguising itself as their father. But let’s just leave those be.”

She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but let me continue. For now.

“Anyway, over the course of their marriage, Vespera grew into the village’s most prominent defender, especially after she started to incorporate some of the magic Nox had been teaching her.

However, one day, a couple of years after Vespera and Nox got married, tragedy struck the village, as the village elder, Aurora’s husband, was murdered under mysterious circumstances. Suspiciously quickly the blame was put at Vespera’s feet, with Nox – yes, her very own husband – claiming she was seething with jealousy for her sister Aurora, who was married to the late village elder.

“The village quickly turned against her, demanding that she should be punished for her deed. Hearing Nox’s reluctant confession and seeing Aurora shedding shameful tears was all they needed to be fully convinced their story to be true.

“Enraged, Vespera gathered her closest companions and left the village, crossing the river and making camp on the opposite shore – roughly where we are sitting right now. However, her numbers were small, and the beast numerous.

“To make up for the lack in numbers, Vespera used spells Nox had taught her but that she had yet to use; she reanimated the fallen monsters and used their corpses against the tide.

“In the old village, things weren’t going so stellar following Vespera’s departure, having lost their strongest defenders. Aurora still offered her comfort each morning, but some villagers now found her words hollow and slowly but surely people started to sneak away from the village in the hopes of finding refuge with Vespera’s camp.

“When Vespera learned that her sister had now wed her husband, she was seething with rage. However, in the end, it didn’t matter. Not in the face of their doom. Her task remained the same, to keep everyone under her protection safe. No matter what.

“Over time, what was once a mere camp turned into a village. The growing fires across the river caused a change between the old and the new village. Rumours started to spread in Vespera’s village. Rumours that people were being lured with lies, deceit and witchcraft. That people had traded their freedom and soul for the so-called safety of Vespera’s growing necromancer forces.

“None of them seemed to find any purchase, though. So, when Aurora herself crossed the river and echoed the very rumours that had been fruitlessly circulating, she was met with disdain and dismissal. Forcing her to turn back to her own village with her tail tucked between her legs.

“Having her hand so completely shoved aside, Aurora launched raiding parties across the river, instead. Unheeding of how that put the remaining villagers on her side in even greater danger. Causing the fires of the old village to quickly grow fewer and fewer.

“One day, Vespera couldn’t bear to see the decline happening without doing something, something to save her sister. So, she crossed the river in an attempt to rescue Aurora from herself, not taking anyone with her so as to not put anybody else in danger.

“When Vespera’s village woke up the following morning, they were met with the sight of the smouldering remains of their old village. They waited and waited, but Vespera was never to return,” I concluded the myth. “Of course, I paraphrased a little, as this isn’t exactly the version I was taught, nor is it the one you’ll find written down in a book these days. But that’s kind of the point, the myth has changed practically each time it was told, but the ethos within it has always stayed the same.”

“Don’t trust your siblings?” Seren asked with a playful grin.

“Obviously,” I said self-deprecatingly. Not that she would know why. Yet. “But no, not what the moral of the story was. Care to hazard a serious guess?”

She grew pensive, thankfully giving it the serious thought I had asked her to give it. “Considering that you’re a necromancer from Vespera, I assume the moral is tied to her somehow?”

I nodded, urging her to continue.

“Okay, so Aurora gave people hope and kindness, but that led to the destruction of the village,” she continued her thought process. “However, I would argue that Nox was more responsible for it than Aurora. It seems like she was merely being manipulated by someone that seemed very conveniently placed each time. I take it he killed the village elder?”

I nodded with a tilt. “Or so the story goes.”

She nodded, mostly to herself. “Okay, then what Aurora did wasn’t the cause, but Nox’s actions were. Except, this is about Vespera. She was the stalwart defender, using what Nox taught her, including necromancy, to defend the people. Pragmatic, yet deeply caring. A means to an end, and yet she was willing to sacrifice herself to save her sister, who had, arguably betrayed her. So, selfless, as well?”

A wide smile spread across my face as I nodded. “Selflessness, pragmatism but deeply caring, and stalwart guardianship, those are the core values I was taught from a young age. But there is more to the story.”

She watched me with rapt attention, and it suddenly struck me how naturally we slotted back into the same comfortable rhythm we had months ago. As if nothing had happened, and we weren’t having a long overdue conversation about my not-so-fun past. Emphasis on ‘as if’.

“Vespera means dusk, Aurora means dawn, and the night is filled with monsters and dangers,” I said leadingly.

She blinked a couple of times, before she returned my smile. “Vespera was the guardian against the encroaching darkness, whereas Aurora gave the people the hope of a new day.”

“Precisely!” I exclaimed as I nodded proudly, before sobering. “Or at least, that’s how I’ve come to see it later on. Back when I grew up, I was taught it slightly differently. Vespera fought, whereas Aurora gave false hope, for night would always fall, therefore it was more honourable to seek to delay the arrival of the night.

“Obviously, it wasn’t the literal night they referred to, but incoming calamity. It is always better to prepare and meet calamity head on than to let it happen and offer comfort to the fallen, for what use if comfort to those that were failed to protect. It was this absolutist stance that governed the Vesperan Empire.

“And led it to its doom.”