Chapter 4: Duty

(Cora)

Being the wife of the High Emperor was certainly a simple task before we’d had children. Fantasia was sewing and mending clothes while I tried to get the baby warm by the fire. I was also trying to cook a good stew for our journey ahead. I’d taught Fantasia how to sew at a young age, but she’d never quite gotten the handle of it. I was constantly walking between her, the baby, and the food, trying to manage all three at once. 

At some point, I almost started warming a piece of unfinished cloth, and quite nearly threw the baby into the stew I was making. I finally sat down as I just focused on keeping the baby warm, I had no idea where in the world my husband and Eris had gone. 

Fortunately, the very people walked in the door at that moment, Eris quickly took over cooking while my husband took the baby from my hands, tucking him into his armour to keep him warm. He shook his head lovingly at me as I sat there exhausted. 

“My love, don’t take on so many tasks at once, if you’re going to cook, at least give Fantasia the child or tell her to put her sewing away so that she can do it for you.” I nodded absent-mindedly. I was so completely burnt out, and tired that I didn’t question why he had on his armour, why Eris held two of his three swords, why he was suddenly calling Fantasia, or why I was now on my cot. 

The last thing I remembered was him looking at me, a look of concern on his face as he turned away and got back to watching over our daughters.

It was late that night that my husband and I were told that our first-born had been captured by the Void Clan. Neither of us had slept in days as we continued our advance on the enemy. Our troops slept soundly alongside their respective rulers. They needed the rest. I looked into his dark-ringed, beaten eyes that held the candles of his indomitable spirit. Those eyes that reflected the rage I felt in my heart.

“You said she would be safe!” I shouted at him. 

He bared his teeth and a snarl like a beast without breath escaped from his lockjaw, sabred grin. “She isn’t dead yet, is she?” He argued as he looked out in the direction of the bastion that held our oldest nearly thirty-two kilometres away. “We leave tonight, she will be free by midday.”

We flew from our roost as I took the life from one of our beasts of war. It was regrettable and I shuddered as the power entered my veins. I shook my head, this was war. It was only fitting that I give our enemy back the gift they had given me. I formed a firearm from the force within me. 

The enemy’s bastion came into view far faster in the world of my dreams than it had that day. Before we even struck the ground, I fired my weapon along the walls of the enemy’s stronghold, each shot finding its mark. Each life fuelling my crusade.

We landed and my husband began his dance among the soon-to-be dead. I dodged through swarms of enemy soldiers like bees pouring from the walls and guardhouses. I fought for hours, only taxing my body with cuts and bruises here and there. Any being that laid a hand on me fell instantly from the horrid lifeforce I drank from them. Hate was all that filled me as I fired shot after shot through the enemy in righteous fury.

When there lay nothing but bodies around me, I looked to the bastion. My body shook, my vision blurry, but I fought sleep’s annoying embrace one more morning as Sol-Ano rose.

Then I realised that this wasn’t Sol-Ano as it was filled with black, crystalline energy. A maw appeared beneath it as a monster rose through the building. Anything caught near it atomized, eyes that were frenzied and opalescent, a thousand arms reached towards the sky.

A bellow like a horn of rage and war burst from the creature’s jagged, torn open face as the sun roared into the sky and erupted into several pieces shooting down around the continent. I heard it, however, differently. I heard his agony beneath the beast-like appearance. This wasn’t just rage, this was grief. Within one of the arms beneath the bastion was our only daughter. Within the crazed marble eyes was a wreck of a man that I would come to know painfully well when the crystals broke away and collapsed in upon themselves.

He walked from that place where the pieces of that wreck no longer stood. His wings dragged along the ground, splayed over the bodies of the damned. His head was turned down, in his arms, barely contained, was his heart itself that he had sought for years. At the time, I had hardly thought of our next child that was to be born six months later. 

I soon awoke to Fantasia shaking me gently. I bolted upright and asked her about the baby but she pressed a hand to my shoulder and I lay back down.

“Father says you should rest, you’re exhausted. He also says that having kids is hard and takes a lot out of you.” I tried to respond but the words never left my mouth. Fantasia quieted me and gave me a flask of water and a bowl of soup. 

“Father says he was looking for firewood trees with Eris this morning, that’s why he wasn’t here. He’s going to go chop a few right now to help keep us warm.” I sighed, knowing that it was probably best if I got some rest, as exerting myself would only make me sick, and we couldn’t have that. 

I probably should’ve worried more about our baby, however. I assumed that he was lying in the wooden crib within the cottage nearby.