Chapter 37: Goddess of Inspiration

Note: Thanks to WRC 264 for beta reading this!

Princess Ava – Princedom of Kivoneth, The Strifelands of Zeutch

“You need to ... keep them alive,” I panted to Greta, my face flushed. I lowered Sven’s shoulders to the ground, holding his right side, my bedmaid the left.

Her youthful face glanced up at me. “What? Are you ... going somewhere?”

I sucked in a deep breath, my heart racing from dragging Sven back to the fire where the others lay trembling and quivering, the poison raging through their bodies. My entire body trembled, fear clawing through my guts. They couldn’t die.

My family couldn’t die.

“We’ll keep them ... alive, Your Highness,” croaked Nathalie, the only one still conscious, her face wan, and her body wrapped up in a blanket.

“But where are you going?” Greta asked.

“Az.” I drew in a deep breath and laid down beside Sven. I closed my eyes and let my soul slip out of my body into the feyhound’s form.

I settled into my new form, rising up onto the four legs. My body felt long and lean. I glanced around, my perspective lower. I breathed through the feyhound’s nose and ... smelled. My other proxies had the sense of touch, I could be stimulated sexually through them, but I couldn’t smell. I couldn’t taste.

I didn’t even understand how I could imbue the feyhound. I hadn’t prepared it. I hadn’t bonded to it. It just ... felt open. Emptied. It didn’t matter. I had to get help. I bounded away from the fire, my four feet slapping on the hard-packed road leading along the Forest of Lhes. My legs stretched out as I ran faster and faster, the land blurring beside me.

I felt no exhaustion. The feyhound’s form didn’t have muscles. The branches that wove its body into a wicker form didn’t need to rest. It had no heart that had to labor. Nothing but my will kept it moving.

And I would save my family.

I raced down the road dark as fast as a horse. As fast as the wind. The stars blazed clear above me, wheeling across the sky, the crescent moon rising towards a zenith. I hardly noticed because I dwelt in my fear. It squeezed my brain, compressing it. Terrors whipped at me to keep running, to keep flying down the road.

What if Sven died while I went for help? What if Kora? Zanyia? I didn’t even want Aingeal or Ealaín to perish. I had to save them all.

I had to.

How long would it take me to reach Az?

What if they died?

Slata, I prayed to the mother of all, watch over my family. Watch over those I love. Don’t let them perish. Please, please! And Rithi, sustain your priestess and her family! Let her live to keep producing art in your honor.

My fears haunted me every moment as I ran down the road.

The world lightened before me, a soft, green glow built ahead of me. The darkness of the forest didn’t race on my right any longer as Lake Verdant’s soft light lit up the night. Hope surged through me. The lake country. I neared Az. I could reach it in time.

I kept running faster and faster, passing Lake Verdant’s shimmering surface. Another light lit up the western horizon, a soft blue hue. Lake Cerulean. Az lay near it’s shores, built between the major lakes, each glowing a different hue.

I would save my family.

As the sun rose behind me, I crested the hill and spotted the city of Az sprawling before me, Lake Cerulean glowing to the south. I knew this city. I had lived here for several years, attending the University with the other powerful and rich of Zeutch and the surrounding nations. Not even the Strife had hindered the center of learning in the world. I raced down the road, passing the farms that ringed the city. Houses grew more and more common as I entered the outskirts of the city, racing by the growing crowds of people spilling out to start their days.

People gasped at the sight of me. I ignored them. I darted down familiar streets, snarling and growling, barreling around men pushing wheelbarrows, darting beneath the hooves of horses pulling draft wagons. I let nothing stop me as I wove through the streets of Az towards the Temple of Rithi.

Kora’s fellow priests were my family’s only hope.

Ealaín

Heat gripped me. I swam through the fever. I groaned and trembled. Fear rippled yellow through the stifling darkness that gripped me. I was failing. My charge. Kora was dying. I was dying. How could I inspire her to create amazing art if she died?

I darted from the heat. I stumbled through it, searching for something. I didn’t know what. Why? I didn’t recognize my surroundings. Everything blurred around me. I grasped a wall, something smooth beneath my touch.

Something familiar.

“Mother?” I asked, stumbling down a hallway. My entire body shuddered and shook. I blinked, struggling to focus my eyes. “Mother?”

“My daughter,” a voice tinkled from around me, sounding like a breeze blowing through metallic chimes.

“Mother!” I gasped, the world spinning around me. “I’m ... I’m dying, Mother.”

“Yes,” Rithi, Goddess of Art, whispered, her words spinning around me. “The poison ravages your mortal flesh. Your soul’s tether to your body is weakening.”

“Is there ... Is there hope?” I asked. “For Kora? Her potential to create beauty in the world is so great...”

“There is always hope.”

“This is Sven’s fault.” I swayed, the heat growing so great. It boiled out of my body and infected my soul. I was wandering from my body, drifting through the Astral Realm. I’d found my way to my mother’s realm.

“Sven?” she asked. “Sven poisoned her?”

“He led her into the position to be poisoned.” I straighten, struggling to focus my blurry vision, to spot my mother’s form. “She’s just too much of a gentle soul to object to his whims, Mother.”