The White Queen cast her eye upon the dim red sky. Streaks of emerald heralded the descent of the Goddess’ avatars.

She was familiar with their kind, indeed she knew many of them by name.

Some were her seniors, many were her juniors.

The scene stirred up a very negative set of memories.

She, the White Queen, bested by Alfrick and then banished from her own castle.

She, “The Mad Queen”, loathed and hated by the masses, cursed to never take up arms against him, who her Goddess favored.

She, The Abandoned Queen, who sat out in the cold, starving and tortured by her own immortality.

Was it sheer coincidence that put her on a road to be passed by him one day?

Rags and riches, their very fortunes were reversed, but though he hated her he still took her in because he needed her.

She creased her brows, in her bosom burned a raging fire.

She would never starve, never go cold, never leave her throne to another, not ever again.

The act of seducing a man she hated, breaking down his barriers, quite clumsily at first, had been absolutely revolting to her, and then there was the cursed fate of bearing him several dozen heirs.

All this she did so she might sit the throne again, wear her crown again, and now that she had it she would never yield it to another.

Then shone a light before her bosom, emerald and bright, the very same light as those now beheld by the eyes of Alfrick and his other two brides.

She didn’t need to see it to know it was the light of a Beacon, her Beacon, that roused her from waling nightmare.

She could not ignore the thing as it conveyed the Goddess’ will into her mind.

‘Why must you waste my time, who wants your offer of reconciliation?’ She thought to herself in silence.

She reached out then to seize the stone, eyes both bitter and cold before its glow.

There was a shift in the wind.

She could sense that another pair of eyes had glanced upon her from not so far across the room.

She spied Cyril, The Sapphire Scholar, through the corner of her eye.

This woman  was an advisor to her in name alone, she served Alfrick as her watcher.

The bookworm turned her eyes away, she feigned ignorance, but Elena wasn’t a fool.

She returned her gaze unto the Beacon…

She almost hesitated.

Almost…

The hall gave way to an awful echo, a shattering and a ghostly scream resounded through the building.

Cyril’s fingers stopped half way through turning another page and then with some resignation she opened her eyes to face the white queen.

Elena collapsed back into her throne, her mind seemed steady but Cyril knew better.

The Scholar shook her head and turned her gaze away from the scene.

What remained of Elena’s Beacon was but fragments.

She’d smashed the thing against the stone paved floor.

Cyril used to believe no force on this Ymir could do something like that; needless to say she no longer dared to think so.

The Scholar tried to be indifferent, like her usual self, but on this occasion it just could not be done.

They were so close to the end now, if things moved down this road then would not the Queen regret it?

“Perhaps it’s not my place,” Said the scholar, who shut her book, removed her glasses and then looked straight up at the Queen, “is it worth it? Throwing that away for the sake of pure obstinacy?” Elena responded with a bitter scoff.

Her own thoughts were clear on the matter and she had no need to tell it to her accursed watcher either.

“Aren’t you yourself also still living just to see your burden through?” The Scholar cast a frown upon the unflinching Queen.

True to form, Elena poked at a truth her heart could not deny.

“You’re not wrong,” She conceded, and then she glanced upon the shining sapphire Beacon that adorned her favored bookmark.

That Beacon belonged to the Goddess Authun, who to this day lay buried beneath the Muspelheim Continent’s City of Vesta.

The time had come again, the six dukes, who were their modern day and mortal heirs, would wage war to set that being free.

If they succeeded, then she would use this Beacon to ask the Goddess to lift the curse she’d placed upon her people five centuries prior.

She was just as Elena said, living only to see her burden through.

“We’re not that different,” Said The Queen, “I don’t want an afterlife, and you, out of obligation, will go to a different one from the rest of us. Will you miss your ‘sisters’? Will you miss your man?”

“What about you? Do you truly not feel anything for that man?” Asked Cyril.

“Just hatred,” Said the Queen, “Only that.”

The Scholar fell silent, for she was no stranger to the tale.

Elena had been Queen of this land long before the rest of them arrived, and she was not Alfrick’s bride by choice.

That man, in her own words, had stolen away her kingdom.

She was cursed by her own Goddess to never raise a hand against him and she lived in the castle only by his leave.

One word from that man and she’d fall from a Queen to a commoner all over again.

Yet Cyril didn’t quite believe her when she said she hated him.

Perhaps she had at first, it was only reasonable, but how could it possibly still be the same now?

“There’s not a woman alive who could be capable of sharing a bed with a man she hates for so long, no matter her circumstances,” Cyril firmly believed her own words at that moment.

Perhaps she herself could put up with that kind of torment for a year or two, but nearly a full millennia?

She would waste away inside her own skin if she tried to hate a man for any longer.

Yet Elena’s reply surprised her, for the Queen only scoffed, same as ever.

“A ‘Real’ woman can,” She said, and this time Cyril heard the usually hidden scorn loud and clear.

She took pause, and asked in a hushed whisper,

“A ‘Real’ woman?”

“You know what I mean,” Said Elena, who was lost in her own sense of indignation.

Cyril said nothing, there was nothing left to say.

None in their circle would claim to be ignorant about the curse her kin had suffered, the very one which she pleaded for Alfrick to resolve with this war; the curse which did not allow her people to bear from their wombs a single male heir.

The curse that labeled all women of the Athena Household as “defective goods” in countless societies throughout this miserable world.

 

O

 

The door shut with a heavy resound.

Cyril woke from her daze and looked back upon the guards, who in turn kept to their standing positions at the borders of the chamber door.

Cyril creased her brows, she didn’t care anymore.

She turned from that place and glanced upon the neighboring stairway. 

Up above lay her chambers, and she was in a mood to retire to them for just an hour, or maybe two.

She’d have surely taken that route, had the resound of two titan boots not called her eye to the entryway.

“Lady Ancestor?” She heard a voice call out to her, deep for a woman’s but not too much as to be mistaken for a man’s.

She turned her gaze then upon the titan figure and raised her gaze to meet her.

There stood a woman clad in sapphire trimmed armor, and who bore a physical frame taller than four meters.

Cyril kept her council, but had to lift her neck all the same to meet the woman standing before her.

She wasn’t short herself, though she was on the shorter side compared to  her peers in the Platinum Class, those men and women who, like her, were the strongest and most altered by Ash’s influence.

Even they only just exceeded three meters on average, and she was just a bit below that.

Compared to this giant, however, while any Platinum Class would both be enormous next to a mortal man, she was like a child when compared.

This titan’s name was, rather amusingly, Selkie, and Cyril recognised her as a distant descendant: the current Duchess of the House of Athena.

Though newly risen to that station, she was apparently well versed in the art of war thanks to the tutorship of her mother.

Cyril had fairly high hopes for her.

“What is the matter?” The Scholar asked.

“Lady Ancestor…I have been appinted to join the war effort,” Selkie said, hand pressed to her chest in a cordial manner, “I shall be leading the charge.”

“I see…are you sure that’s what you want?” Cyril asked her.

The young titan took a pause and glanced at her. Cyril noticed her blunder, but she truly couldn’t help it.

The fact was that some degree of trepidation had escaped through her facade.

The Scholar’s nostalgic eye caused the image of this young woman to overlap with those of her forebears, all the way from the Duchess’ late mother back to Cyril’s own first born daughter.

There had been so many generations between then, and now all of the Duchesses numbered among Feng’s Einherjar.

They were dead, plainly, and a full half died on Muspelheim’s shores.

She wondered then, why would Elena, even granted her troubles with the Goddess and the Emperor, choose to give up on joining her heirs in those hallowed halls?

Could such a price be worth it just to carry a centuries long grudge?

How could Elena not see the harm she was doing to herself?

She may have hated her, that woman who had stabbed at an emotional wound that centuries could not heal, but she couldn’t seem to stop fussing over her either. Perhaps it was an ingrained habit? After all, she’d been her “advisor” for centuries now, but in practice she held all the real decision making power.

Alternatively perhaps she just couldn’t stand to sit by and watch as that woman threw away something she desperately desired but knew she could never have?

“Lady Ancestor?” Selkie raised her head.

The silence had gone on a tad long, Cyril surmised that she’d wandered too far into her own turmoiled mind.

“Yes, I heard you, enjoy the honor, fight, live and die well,” She said this, as was custom, but Selkie could sense her insincerity.

She was young, but a Duchess was a Duchess and she was well educated in the masks people wore.

Still, the titan woman said nothing on the matter, she merely stood, then saluted with respect as Cyril granted her the right.

Her Ancestor must have her own troubles, it was not her place to question that.

Then fell an awful silence, Cyril bowed and then turned on her heels to leave, but she was stopped by Selkie who called to her again.

“Lady Ancestor.”

“Is there something else?” Asked the Scholar.

“Yes, Milady,” Said the titan in turn, “It concerns the women of Venus, those distant relatives who have all but been wiped out by Cain and the machinations of The Nidhogg Empire.”

Cyril creased her brows, then she let free yet another weary sigh.

She naturally imagined it might be this matter.

Several of her foremothers had been of the same mind to try, yet none had yielded results worthy of any telling.

The women from Venus were once their kin, it’s true, and so they suffered from the same curse, even so they had rejected every Duchesses who in the past had wanted to save them.

“I urge you to reconsider. Please permit me to invite the survivors of that city to seek asylum in Athena.” Cyril shook her head, but not to say no.

She had seen this a dozen times, it was nothing new.

“What will you say if they are not willing?” The Scholar asked, and not for the first time.

She could hardly help it, given the record.

Whole centuries divided the women of Venus and Athena, even if all were of her blood.

They both survived in an unforgiving world with their curse and its limiting conditions just the same, and they both did it on their own.

The titan-like bodies of The Athenians today was a result of that very need.

She of all people would never have expected her descendants would mix their blood with the Ares Duchy’s giants, however.

What might the women of Venus, who had pursued beauty and compromise as their tools instead, think on seeing this?

They’d be more likely to freak out than not.

Then there were the political circumstances to consider.

There were those of Venus’ ilk who already considered themselves long abandoned by the daughters of Athena. Then there was the fact that Athenians had antagonized the City of Mars in particular during their previous raids.

Despite the old saying, the Men of Mars and the Women of Venus were close allies.

Sharing in a common curse and ancestor did not mean they women of Venue be of the same mind.

“I understand, Ancestor…yet still, I deem it worth the effort to try,” Said Selkie.

“As you will then, I’m only an advisor, the house is yours to govern as you deem fit.”

“Still, I would not act without your counsel,” Said Selkie with a bow, “I am sorry to have burdened you, I know you must be busy too.”

“It brings me no burden,” Said Cyril, who bid her successor to raise her head. “And thank you, you’ve helped calm me down a little.The titan woman raised a curious brow.

She had no way of knowing her ancestor’s mind, but she was savvy enough to know that whatever unsettled the mind of one of the Brides of the Emperor did not concern her.

She bowed, then took her leave.

Cyril saw her off in silence, and then she too turned on her heels to do the same.

Her mind was clear, so she decided to take the topic of Elena and her Beacons to their so-called husband. Perhaps that man might succeed where she had failed and persuade the foolish Queen?

After all it was a topic resolving around the two of them anyway, best to have them sort it out.

She was an outsider, just as much as the Duchess in this matter.

Then if that still failed, she’d just have to try again, same as those foolish heirs of her’s who just could not bring themselves to abandon their far distant kin.