It had been a long night, though we set out upon the day’s onset. And in the dingy tunnels and dark-root-shrouded halls we had long groped our dimly lit way. But here we approached the true source of that vague, mysterious ambient light.

It was precisely at the time when the prolonged life in the once headmistress of the Loredan finally expired. As it faded from her, so did the transplanted chamber vanish with all its aged furniture, its paintings now obsolete snapshots of a past laid to rest. And yet the general shape and principle usage of the bedchamber persisted. For there within the pocket of space where the deathbed once lay, something similar was born. But the room warped and bent as though returning to its original shape until we found ourselves on the edge of a vast cavern. At whose center a vast bedstead formed from the strewing rocks, and a body of water surged and foamed within its formation. It was an infinitely vast underground lake, and could well be vaster than our flawed estimation from the shifting space we stood. Who of us in that dark could tell if from some paces or some leagues away did we then stand apart from that throbbing center?

But undoubtedly, the rippling and tangible foams held the shape of a bed, if one but beheld it the way an astrologer would discern hydras, nymphs and centaurs in high heavens. And indeed only one being could make her berth in such a bed so scant conforms to the human conception of one.

The ambient light had been but the most peripheral influence of that being - the veritable light of all lights in our ancient universe. So did we behold the young Dawn in her slumber, grudging the world her life-giving gift. To our mortal eyes, she appeared the woman of untold years and vernal beauty as ever we knew. And when she stirred, the supple skin caused wild ripples on the bed of foams, her rosy locks cherished by the disturbed surface. And now her long-lashed lids scarce parted, already too brilliant for the eyes, commanding our gaze to the dark rock and water under her, lest they burn our vision.

“So you come, Estival alares,” she sighed the words, and yet they echoed the caverns and rang clear in our ears. “It appears you youths granted my late warrior her last wish - a fast-breaking augurs an agreeable day! So?”

At the sudden question, Valerian promptly bowed, “‘Tis time for your advent, mistress. The world awaits.”

“Ah!” she rose and stretched her arms with a yawn, then gazed about like a still drowsy cat. “Time indeed. Ever time calls for I. Disagreeable time. Noisy denizens. Exasperating duty! Do not you wish sometimes to flee your charge and leave the world to its meddling self?”

“Natheless it is your duty,” Litzia said with annoyance in equal measure, “Your nature, and your own choice.” Belatedly, she added, “Captain.”

“You annoy me so, girl,” said the Dawn. “I stir but to punish a rude wakening.”

And she rustled, the counterpane falling from her radiant figure. At once the light surged dangerously, the searing heat licked and bit savagely at our flesh.

“Fly,” shouted Valerian. The blonde knight seized Wisteria’s arms, who had already been on her feet with alarm.

“‘Tis time.” Litzia seized my hand.

“What must come will come,” I said.

Would the pledge be, was the burning question. Too many times ours had been tested to the limits. Strained, broken, even once revoked.

But during the story of Wisteria’s mother, and even when the daughter herself had rejected the prize, I, nay, we, for it was there also in her pained eyes, had come to the realization of things greater than our slight differences, our varied beliefs. In the end, how we react to our surroundings, to all the trifles of Fate, matters little to the truth of our cores. But like as not too, that it was less some philosophical epiphany that moved us, and more that a thing indescribable in our heart stirred by these outbursts of emotions, of losses and sufferings, of joy and sadness, forlorn hopes and enduring despairs, and not least the grave fact of mortal life’s transience.

The prominence of these realizations in our hearts was momentary, for too often we are distracted from them by the clutter of earthly life. But at the time it became vital for our escape and for our pledge to be whole once more. Who cares if we may disagree, if one day one may stand opposed to the other, or if it was not innocent chance but sinister purposes that had begotten our pledge? For now, we shall hold on to what is ours for as long as we could, before one day Fate parts us how she did to Wisteria and Hyacinth, forever. So as our hands joined, the words of the vow rang true. To the sky we soared, with the Dawn in hot pursuit.

“But where to?” I shouted.

There was only an untouchable weightlessness beyond the searing aura of our pursuer. No ancient walls to outline our path.

Litzia spread her wings. “Skywards. And ever on. Where else?”

That was the only answer. Though I never bothered inquiring the others of the Anemones as to how they escaped. It was clear enough, according to the monk who had guided us to the hollow’s ground. Most pre-formed pairs who had served on the Daybright had found the ritual but a formal thing. For the greatest obstacle to an untested pair was the awe of our pursuers. But we had known her well and grown accustomed to her divine presence. While what had been at stake was our own bonds, our fragile pledges pushed to the limits of the flimsy fate-ordained cords. Do we maintain the pledge even then, the rest was but acting out legends of old. Yet so close we had come to failure. Close was our escape, our pledge endured in the very last moment. It carried us to the simple path out. Up we went.

Far ahead I discerned the diminishing shape of the newly made pair, Wisteria and Valerian. A pair, far too tough of mind for all this night had befallen them to be shaken by a Dragon’s mere wrath.

Not so easy for lesser alares, I thought. Had I not Litzia, or every experience thus far, I would have done what an azure does best: cowering in fear while letting itself be consumed.

As for the last of my Ala: Galanthus and Acis, who could doubt their bond ever more?

As we ascended, I looked back to the hidden world but once. In the dim but growing light, I discerned the layer of the underground cavern where we had encountered the unmoving creatures or the shapes of things once lived. Who could say for a surety what lurked the Underland and beneath it still, but I dare say they moved then. That the shapes shifted and stirred as the light of dawn suffused them. But as for how they moved, how their grotesque bodies functioned in a gurgling, otherworldly fashion that defied all known laws of physics, I could not tell, for nightmares need not make sense. And if the manner in which the monstrous things uprooted themselves from the ancient ground were signs of joy for the occasional life or agony from long imprisonment, only the denizens of this dark shall ever know. For nevermore shall I return to that place, nor aught living creatures, unless their soul is mangled like Acis, or their pledged oath is carried till the promised parting of death. I dreaded both outcomes, and would sooner find true azure death than to suffer either and move on. I had not the strength within Valerian or Wisteria. I prayed and prayed, as during many a restless night after that day, I had prayed, that at no point in this story I would needs empty my soul inside out in search of that forlorn strength. But I am no Fate, and I have not the shining eyes. And of what the future had in store for me, at the time I had not the slightest idea. That I had only scarce begun the first step into the long voyage that would bear me and mine to shores further than I could imagine, stranger than aught stories Thea could tell, was not something I could conceive then. And yet. And yet I knew, better than an azure had the right to know, that alongside whom I’d like with all my heart to brave all those coming troubles.

But other than my troubled mind, our straightforward flight was not so eventful as to demand description in full. Only that before we knew it, the fresh air of the surface had rushed against us as we shot past the crowd in the concealing darkness at the peak of the Tithonus mount.

Do they ever know, those eager folk awaiting in the dark for the coming of day, what the night beneath hid from view that might never be unearthed?

Will I ever know, for all that I had been distracted by our little play and own anxiety for the future, of things equally sinister down there? What had the other participants’ nights been like? Did they experience like losses, like regrets and like tears the sort we had gone through or some other forms of hellish torments? But from where we were, the ancient walls blinded us from strangers’ suffering. I do wonder, if there was not a deliberate guiding hand that brought us of the same Ala together, for never once we marked other alares down there. And as I looked on to the rest of the emerging alares, I saw strangers whose gravest and most private mysteries I will not learn. Perhaps such is how one lives, such is what differs a stranger from a sister. Not mere assignment and shared battles but privy into those personal demons, that brings us close. And one can only contain so much in one’s short life. So one cannot be the whole world’s sister, even as one cannot be an enemy to all there is.

But such idle, late-night thoughts must come to an end, as the light of day must come and banish all doubts, all momentary revelations of the darkness that haunts us from out of sight. And so from beneath the mountain, the Dawn reached her rosy fingers to the sky and declared a new day’s come. And as she did the crowd gave a loud cheer, long had they waited in vigil silence. The birds burst into songs. Sleep and dreams were dispelled. The fiery chariot bore her. The morningstars heralded her advent. Their lights combined so that few shades were allowed in the mount’s hollowed core. Upon reaching the summit where her officers stood, she landed the chariot on the platform, burning wheeled touched the marble but cast no shadow. Turning, she spread her arms toward the ritual’s participants. We needn’t flee aught more, her gesture conveyed.

Those alares hung midair round the summit, us among them, still hard of breaths from the spirited chase. Not all had passed into day from night, and some few remained in the mountain, waiting to be extracted and exiled from that sacred but evil place by the ritual’s end.

As for the present ritual, there came the last act. But as the others flocked towards the platform where Aurora stood, Litzia was still.

“What is wrong?” I asked.

But we both knew the reason she halted, the final, ultimate dread that stayed her wings. The very reason and custom as painted on the hydriae. Ever the Dawn hunts for fair companions, and mortals flee from her oft-fatal love. But all the same, none could resist her charm in the end, her offering of shelter in this sky, a place in her embrace safe from darkness.

She had chased after us with wrath through the mountain, had threatened to burn us alive. But now that she spread her arms, we would come and offer ourselves at own behest.

For she is the Dawn. Legends never told if Tithonus regretted his immortality to this day. Only that he lived as a cicada ever clamoring the summer day, and that the city of his namesake prospered as one among the illustrious civilizations in the skies.

So even Valerian, who blamed herself and the captain in equal measure for the death of her once pledge-sister, wheeled now on the back of her new pair, seeking the very hope that long ago had driven her from the crumbling nest in that monastery.

And Acis, whose soul had once been severed, whose pair had once been threatened to be taken from her by the fiery deity, even she wished only to be allowed once more to that safe haven where she and hers might preserve in the face of all past tragedies. And though she knew not if the captain’s verdict many years ago to admit only a changed soul into her vessel still stood, now that the old and new were merged, still she hoped.

Hope. And yet for all those dazzling hopes, brilliant and guiding as Aurora’s daily course across the sky, the Daybright was where Litzia’s hope ended. To her, Aurora did not grant but take, not only hopes and wants, but all that she prized in life: honor, dignity and freedom.

“But your story does not end here,” I said, “you have a plan, do you not? Idiotic plan, impossible plot, but you do have one.”

“Ah, that I do have,” she said with exasperation, “But also I hanker for her neck! But for once sink my claws in that smooth skin, for a moment banish that conceit from that visage!”

“Indulge in thoughts then, I won’t stop you. Perhaps leaving the captain waiting for a while more would sufficiently annoy her.”

“’Tis fine. Let us get this over with.”

So she said, and made descent towards the platform on the mount’s summit. Once arrived, we followed the others by dissolving our pledge and falling in a line before the party of authority. Chief of them, the captain, wore a toga of saffron hue, and with the loose tresses about her, she appeared more youthful than customary.

There we were the center of a whole city’s population, seated as they were on all levels of the mount’s inner side. All manners of monks, sailors and ex-sailors, traders and eager tourists, children and aspiring women, magnates and the common folk. To them it was but a festive sight, a pleasant view even as I had thought of the Anemone before enlisting in their ranks. There was something unnerving about all this, for certainly an azure does not merit all this attention. The last time this happened, the hierogram making almost drove me and my people to a terrible flog. And ‘twas no pleasant recollection.

“Warriors,” presently, Aurora greeted us, her clear voice echoing throughout the mountain, “much ordeals and evil have troubled your passage, yet Fate uttered the word and with her hidden hand anointed your brow with her mark, and the dark did not avail. Was it but Luck and Chance? Was it your own prowess or the pledge that is ordained? Is this day the ultimate test of your worth or but the first of many tight passages, even as once you did pass your mother’s womb? The answer is already known to each of you, for I do not admit the ignorant and the arrogant. And so here you stand, as worthy as any knight and wyverness in my Hall. Or... so I would have liked to say,” she knitted her brow, her eyes in ponder, “For I see some few of you have causes for unrest, and have not emerged as they have been before the test.”

And she looked now Galanthus and Acis, who indeed had cause for unrest.