Book 4: The Samsara Crucible

“You told me to wake you,” Urstes said quietly, peering in from the cracked bedroom door. “It’s time to get ready.”

Euryphel didn’t move from where he lay on the bed, one arm stretched over his half-open eyes, the other strewn at the side. The sheets lay crumpled around his waist.

Urstes nodded and closed the door with a soft click.

The prince closed his eyes and lay unmoving for a few minutes before getting up and sitting on the mattress’ side, his toes draping on the floor. All around him was a flood of arrows, more than ever before.

What I would give for this day to already be over. He stared down at his hands, the bandages wrapping from his fingertips all the way up to his shoulders. Even with the best Life practitioners on hand, estimates projected that it would be at least a year before his arms were restored to full function. Ascendant Ari’s blast had been more powerful than simply light or flame, changing his cells fundamentally, inducing some form of violent radiation.

It’s a miracle you’re alive, they had all said as they worked over his prone body, picking through the wreckage of the Cuna, the Eldemari’s sundered palace. The SPU had a small number of inside operatives within Cunabulus that quickly came upon his position and began to administer aid. Guardian Por’sha had reached him next, the peak wind elementalist flying across the Bay of Ramsay in minutes to spirit him away from the destruction and back to Ichormai for intensive care.

Insensate by pain and exhaustion-induced delirium, Euryphel had hallucinated when they came, when Por’sha tried to take him away.

He couldn’t move. Each breath came haltingly, his lungs filled with fire, his eyes watering.

Ian stood over him, brows pulling together, his eyes red from the smoke. He held Euryphel’s body aloft, then scrambled forward and began to peel dirty, melted garments from flesh.

The prince wheezed and struggled against Ian’s hold, but the effort was only met with a gaze full of worry.

“I’m fine,” he whispered, his lips barely moving.

Ian paid him no mind and Euryphel’s robe tore off, revealing his entire torso. His hands begin to tremble.

Euryphel convulsed with pain. “This is all my fault.”

“How can you say that?” Ian whispered. “If I had never come to you, none of this would have come to pass.”

“You’re wrong. My mother knew I would bring ruin.”

But it hadn’t been Ian, Euryphel found out later. Ian was already gone. The prince didn’t know whether he had spoken to anyone at all or just in feverish dreams; Por’sha and the others all claimed he was unconscious. He didn’t know if they were saying that because it was true or they wanted to spare his ego.

The prince limped off the bed with a hiss and walked over to a closet on the far side of the room, bypassing his usual wardrobe. Within the closet was a new garment in a black bag, outfitted with buttons and tie sashes that Euryphel could fasten himself with his elementalism. He gingerly lifted the hanger from the rack, his fingers tender beneath the bandages. The prince walked over to the bed and dropped the bag, then slowly unzipped it, his fingers pulling with agonizing slowness.

I can’t use my hands to move things, nor can I use them for my practice. It would be one thing if Euryphel could replace his hands with limbs of wind, but he wasn’t at that level; only true peak practitioner elementalists could boast that kind of control. He had relied on gestures, fine movements of his fingers and precise angling of his arms and legs...but none of that was possible now. When he first woke, he’d been unable to do some of the basic fundamentals. Turning a door knob turned into breaking the door in half; lifting himself above the ground did little more than cause his robes to fly upward, revealing his injuries.

Mentally, he knew that unlearning reliance on physical motion was good. It was something he could consider only because he was approaching ninety-percent End affinity, the source of his elementalism; less than that and it would be a near hopeless endeavor.

Doesn’t mean it isn’t difficult. The prince grit his teeth and used all of his concentration to lift the robe from the unzipped bag with clumsy fingers of wind, holding it up to the light of the morning sun streaming through the windows.

Unfastened, the robe looked like a shapeless stretch of patterned white and blue cloth. Euryphel shook his head and draped it on the bed, then removed his undergarments and headed to his personal baths to wash up.

❖❖❖

“Prince,” Urstes said, inclining his head. Euryphel limped out of the doorway but didn’t gesture for the guardsman to approach. His steps were slow, but he was the Crowned Prime: people worked on his schedule.

It didn’t hurt that he wanted to delay reaching his final destination as much as possible.

“How are you feeling?”

Euryphel turned his head toward Urstes as he walked down the hall. They didn’t have very far to go, just down the corridor. “I slept.”

Urstes narrowed his eyes. “I should hope so. Is that all you have to say?”

The prince sighed and blew a strand of hair from his mouth. “You’ve been pushier the past few days, Guardian.”

“Do you blame me?”

Euryphel snorted. “No. I know you’re trying to take care of me.”

The guardsman shook his head and wrapped his hand around the hilt on his hip. He fixed his gaze on the tall, array-inscribed wooden doors at the end of the hall.

“It feels like I’m a child again,” Euryphel whispered. “Weak, terrified...triumphant. Do you remember?”

“Don’t insult me; of course I remember. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such intense déjà vu.”

“Eleven years ago,” the prince murmured.

“You could barely walk then, too,” Urstes grumbled. “You’d pushed yourself so far beyond your own limits killing O’osta that you were recovering for an entire week.”

“Tell me, Guardian. When I stood here eleven years ago, was I excited?”

“No. I didn’t understand it then, why you seemed as if in mourning even though you’d avenged your father. I think you were more wise than I was, back then,” the guardsman chuckled.

Euryphel sighed. “Today marks the end of balance. The end of an era...the end of the SPU.”

“The rise of the West.”

The prince’s face remained impassive. “Perhaps.” Soon he found himself before the door, its wood panels covered in fate arrows.

Urstes stepped forward and pulled the door ajar. Beyond was the assembly room, fuller than the prince had ever seen it before. The ground floor was filled with the highest leadership from each of the nations in the Ho’ostar Peninsula and Selejo, all of whom came dressed in their respective colors. In the frontmost three rows were all of the princes of the SPU, the minor seven and the four primes aside from Euryphel seated in the very front.

How they look at me now, Euryphel thought bitterly. Diana regarded him with something bordering on adulation; even Ezenti’s eyes were soft, crinkling at the corners with pride. How different they were from weeks ago, when all seemed lost. Even those from other nations were in good spirits; after today, they wouldn’t be independent, but they would retain most of their autonomy while no longer needing to worry about aggression from their neighbors. The SPU’s relaxed, decentralized form of rule was well-suited for hegemony.

In the balconies overlooking the assembly room, representatives from the press and SPU elites were crammed like sardines, ready to witness the writing of history.

❖❖❖

“Will you put that away?” Mother muttered under her breath.

Germaine ignored her as she continued to sketch out the room on her pad of thick, white paper. “No.”

“There will be pictures later, videos,” Mother continued. “No one else is drawing.”

Germaine resisted the urge to tell Mother that she had no idea what she was talking about. “Drawing a scene in the moment and drawing from a picture...the outcome will be vastly different.” She turned her head to Aunt Julia. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Aunt Julia nodded absently, her gaze distant. “There’s the moment as it is, and the moment as it feels.”

Germaine’s eyes lit up. “Exactly!”

Suddenly Aunt Julia’s body stiffened. “Quiet,” she hissed. “It’s starting.”

The main doors—positioned on the opposite of the room from their seats—swung open. Germaine watched with bated breath as Euryphel stepped through the threshold, the room falling silent as he came into view. Every eye followed his slow path down a small set of stairs and back up another flight leading to the empty dais. Urstes trailed behind him, impressively regal in his decorated Guardian uniform.

The prince walked almost too slow, but there was something about the way he stepped that was graceful, intentional. Germaine knew that he probably couldn’t walk faster, and if she knew, others should know as well. Perhaps if observers were ignorant of the prince’s accomplishments they might demean him for such weakness. Looking around, not a soul dared gaze at the prince with anything other than the respect one might give a tiger. It was an appreciation of the alien, the kind of deference given to those labeled prodigies, the kind of distancing people used to protect themselves from legends.

Germaine wasn’t sitting in the front, but she was in a special section off on the right side on the ground floor reserved for the families of the political elites and leaders. She admittedly didn’t have the best view, but she saw enough to keep her hand blurring with activity over her sketch pad. It was as Aunt Julia said: She didn’t need to capture the fine details of the moment, the precise contours of the prince’s face or the exact number of heads watching him from the gallery. Mother was right that a picture could capture that. What a picture or even video couldn’t capture was everything else—the indescribable, complex web of feeling and emotion spanning everyone and everything.

Finally Euryphel stood before the main podium, his eyes aloof, posture stiff.

“Rise and salute the Prime,” Urstes bellowed, his hand coming up in a formal salute, wind elementalism carrying the words throughout the chamber like the echoing chime of a bell. They resounded everywhere at once, powerful, demanding. The sound of standing bodies roared through the room like a wave. Without exception, everyone saluted Euryphel, even his former enemies.

How must they be feeling? Germaine wondered, her head buzzing. Are they saluting their conqueror, or their sovereign? She’d only been living here for maybe two months at most; while she obviously wanted Ian’s side to win, and was thankful for the royal treatment the SPU had given her...she was removed enough to empathize with the nations forced into surrender. It still confounded her how Ian had gotten so embroiled in the Ho’ostar conflict so quickly. She knew that he’d sought refuge after awakening from the Infinity Loop experiment, but how that spiraled into this...

The prince didn’t show any response to the salutes, standing like a statue, unmoved. Urstes’ hand fell to his side and he stepped away; everyone took that as a signal to return to their seats.

When everything was once more silent, Euryphel addressed the body. “Your presence today honors me,” he began, each word unhurried, precise, much like his steps before. Other people might speak in such a way to draw out the glorious moment of their rise to power, to bask in adulation, but Germaine received almost the opposite impression from Euryphel. He wasn’t jubilant, celebratory; he wasn’t lording a victory over enemies forced into subservience. It was as though with each word, the prince contemplated anew the gravity of the mantle he was assuming.

It’s so...romantic, Germaine mused. Like something out of a drama or novel.

“I do not know my ancestors who abandoned Selejo, the land of their fathers, to plague and ruin. I do not know those ancestors who decided instead to conquer the Ho’ostar peninsula, a lush land that wasn’t theirs. But their actions speak for themselves: I don’t think that they would view today as a victory.”

The prince took a deep breath before continuing. “My father desired an end to the fighting, to the dream of superiority and subjugation. When given the opportunity, he took peace in good faith, working with Selejo to usher in an era of prosperity for all, trying to move past the sins of our fathers.

“He died, and I took his place. I smashed the peace. With the Skai’aren, I conquered and laid waste to cities before claiming them as my own. In doing so, I almost precipitated the end of everything I ever cared about.”

Germaine’s breath caught in her throat at Ian’s mention.

“To many in this room, the Skai’aren was a distant calamity, a harbinger of destruction. In reality, the Skai’aren more than anyone desired a peaceful solution.”

Yes, Germaine thought, hand clenching at her stylus, immobilized. She looked to the side and saw Mother nodding along, while Aunt Julia’s eyes were narrowed, her nostrils flaring.

“At the critical moment, rather than letting Ascendant Ari destroy Selejo, the Skai’aren summoned a massive claw from beyond the sky to stop her advance, saving Pardin from sure destruction. Then, in a feat heralded by returned ascendants as impossible, the Skai’aren slew Ascendant Ari. Finally, as his last act, the Skai’aren ascended, bringing the tyrant Maria Elde Sezakuin with him.”

All in the span of an hour, less than that even, Germaine thought. She knew that what Euryphel was saying was heavily abridged, a simplified retelling of a messy conflict. But as he spoke, his voice firm with authority, it was as though the retelling became truer than fact. The day of three acts, she thought, biting her lip. Is that all people will remember of my brother, his final day smothering those that came before?

“I stand before you now honoring the victory the Skai’aren would have wanted: a lasting peace that benefits all, with Selejo and Ho’ostar united under one banner, no nation usurping the authority of the others, all working toward shared goals of prosperity and prominence.”

The second prime, Ko’la, as well as a leader chosen from each nation of Ho’ostar and Selejo, stood from their seats and filed before the dais.

Ko’la spoke first: “Do you, Karen Euryphel Selejo, pledge yourself in the service of the former people of the Selejo Prince’s Union?”

The prince didn’t nod or move; he simply said, “I do.”

The man to Ko’la’s right began to speak: “Do you, Karen Euryphel Selejo, pledge yourself in the service of the former citizens of Kyeila?”

“I do.”

They went down the line until they reached the last individual on the stage, a man younger than everyone else by at least a decade. Germaine couldn’t see his face now, but as he walked up she had seen how his eyes were red, as though he’d been crying. Her heart went out to him: Unless she had grossly mistaken his identity, the young man was likely going through a lot.

“Do you, Karen Euryphel Selejo...” the young man began, his words unsteady. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Pledge yourself in the service...of the former citizens of Selejo?”

“I do.”

Ko’la stepped forward, walking behind the prince. He removed the prince’s sapphire hair ornament and bestowed upon him a similar piece, this one socketed with an array of different colored gems representing each nation. Thankfully the largest was still a sapphire: Those blue gems complimented Euryphel’s eyes best. The prince bowed his head while Ko’la tucked his hair into place with sure fingers. The polished, filigreed ornament glistened in the overhead light, casting a rainbow onto the floor.

“Rise,” Ko’la commanded. Euryphel raised his head, expression grave. As though her body was moving in a trance, Germaine found herself standing with everyone else in the audience.

The young representative from Selejo stepped forward on the opposite side of Ko’la. Germaine finally had a clear view of his face; he looked like he was saying a final farewell to a loved one at a funeral. In a way, he kind of was.

When the Eldemari’s son spoke, his words were soft, though air elementalism carried them to the ears of all present. “I present to all, Slayer of Ascendant Ari, son of Huron Sethuvius Selejo and Rowena Karen Selejo, former Crowned Prime of the Selejo Prince’s Union, the Crowned Executor of the Selejo Imperial Federation: Karen Euryphel Selejo.”

caerulex

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