The Royal Training Grounds were a sprawling expanse of white stone and sand, usually vibrant with the shouts of the King's Guard and the rhythmic clang of steel. But today, the world had gone still.
A localized, unnatural wind crept up on everyone the ones half naked felt the full brunt as the sweat cooled and made them shiver. Rust coated the weapon racks, and the sand beneath.
Auther's boots crackled like broken glass. He stepped into the room.
He was in a very ethereal room with three thrones, one was his another his dead father's and the one at the very middle his mother's
At the end of this throne room sat Queen Elizabeth. She was draped in heavy, obsidian silks that seemed to swallow the light, her back to the world as she stared out over the cliffside overlook.
To the rest of the court, she was a statue of grief—a mother who had forgotten how to love. To Auther, she was a tear in the tapestry of existence.
Auther stopped ten paces in front of her. He felt the familiar, sickening pressure in his chest—the same discordant hum he had first encountered at the Cathedral during the high mass. It was an ache in the marrow of his bones, a frequency that made his skin crawl.
"I've come to formally request your tutelage," Auther said. His voice was small, but it did not carry the high-pitched urgency of a child. It was the voice of a soul that had been forced to mature in the dark.
"I need to understand magic I do not know of it and you are the best in the kingdom."
Elizabeth did not move. She didn't even seem to breathe. "Find a master in the capital, Auther," she said, her voice a low, melodic chill that felt like a razor across the skin. "There are mages there who have spent decades perfecting the art of the magic. I have nothing to give you but silence."
"The masters in the capital feel human," Auther countered. He took a step forward, his boots crunching loudly on the frozen ground. The "wrongness" emanating from her was a physical wall, pushing against his chest. "I don't care who you are supposed to be. Since the day at the church, I've known. I don't care who you are. You felt wrong."
Elizabeth raised one of her eyebrows she was intrigued but did not seem to care.
He choked back a shiver, his eyes narrowing as he stared at her retreating back. "Your mana… it doesn't flow like the others."
"What does it feel like?" She asked half knowing where it was going
"It curdles. It feels foreign. You feel like something from beyond the veil trying to wear a woman's skin."
"It does not even feel human to you, what do you suppose it is?" She pressed hand flexing on the arm of her throne.
Auther knew she was a bit angry, perplexed at why it did not show, inexplicably knew it was there something told him there was.
"I-I-I don't know."
Finally, Elizabeth hand rose finger pointing at the wall behind him, a small beam of light came out of it cutting a gash into the wall.
"What about now?"
The movement was too fluid, too precise to be natural. When her gaze met his, Auther felt the air leave his lungs. Her eyes weren't the warm, honeyed brown of the Royal portraits hanging in the gallery.
They were a shimmering, unsettling silver, swirling like mercury in a bowl. There was no spark of life in them, only the vast, terrifying depth of a starlit void.
"I bet you are asking yourself why I even did that," she paused, "That is because I stopped being human long ago," she said, her voice flat.
She let the silence stretch, letting the weight of the frost settle into Auther's bones. he shook himself.
"W-w-what do you mean by that." He said shaken just a few inches closer and he would have been dead, the heat from the beam felt heavy.
"Your mother is dead, Auther. She has been for a long time."
The revelation hit Auther with the force of a physical blow. He recoiled, his breath hitching in the frozen air. The rage he had been nursing for years—the resentment of a neglected prince—suddenly flared into something white-hot and jagged.
"Then who are you?" he demanded, his voice cracking with a sudden, raw grief. "A ghost? An impostor? If she's dead, why are you standing here in her palace?"
"You know most insects have to shed their former selves to grow when I was young I found it weird but now that I am grown it is perfectly sensible. You have to leave your old frame to get to a new one to be my disciple you have to be willing to do that." Elizabeth said rising from her throne.
"Wait, why were you never there in my childhood?"
Something pushed him to the wall a strong force it came from her, the murals shattered as she left without answering his question.
"I'm sorry if that hurt you, still for your own good do not wander too far into the abyss, for one day it may swallow you." She left.
Auther felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. He remembered the faint, blurry memories of his infancy—the way his mother would look at him from the doorway but never enter the room. He had thought it was hatred.
Auther took a long, shuddering breath. He looked at his hands, then back at her throne. "As long as my mother is in there somewhere… I'm willing to trust you."
He left went to his room he looked disturbed, Viola was sitting there looking outside through the window, she seemed entranced by the blue gum drop rooves of the capital houses.
He crept up as quietly as he could , closer he cold see her gripping her rapier by the blade blood trickling down drop by drop.
He was so concerned about her he had never seen her bleed now she had injured herself. He came beside her gripped her second hand so hard that she came back to earth.
"My hand is a whole lot softer than your rapier why don't you clench on it?" He said smiling, she smiled back before frowning whimpering and hugging him
He just reacted he was a bit curious but he accepted it
"I miss her Auther, I fucking miss her."
"Who?' He asked she pushed him away that seemed to have broken her trance.
"How was your talk with her majesty?"
He did not answer he felt a bit embarrassed, he turned away going to the wide windows, the distance between them had grown, they both felt it none of them could at on it.
Elizabeth was walking down the halls a quiet grin on her face
"It's time for this stupid little charade to end," she whispered into the wind, her voice carrying a promise of total annihilation that echoed against the palace walls. "My time to act has come before me."
She chuckled a bit.