Dyadia spoke an enchantment that echoed through the small chamber, and torches lit. Orange, flickering flames painted shadows across the stony space—revealing an alchemist’s lab. In the center of the room, on a dais, laid her son’s supine body, cloaked in his blue satin robes. And in the far corner, sat a nest bigger than two bales of hay. Within were five leathery eggs, split down the middle, as if they had stopped mid-hatch.
“Drasilisk offspring.” Crony croaked the revelation, unable to look at her friend for fear of what her face would show. That explained why a full-grown drasilisk had not been found; eggs were much easier to hide. She forced herself to meet Dyadia’s weary feline gaze. “Regardless of their immature state, yer son broke the alliance.”
Dyadia stood by the dais, her hands covering her son’s closed eyes. “The queen had asked him to use his necromancy to find a cure for King Velimer. He dabbled deeper than he ever had and stumbled upon the drasilisk secret. You musn’t tell anyone. He would have to be beheaded for such an offense against your king and the alliance, or there would be a war . . .”
“There already be one brewin’.” Crony stepped closer to Lachrymosa’s prone form. “The soldiers be but a week behind me and I be sworn to me king to keep the world safe. As yer son is to his. What he be thinkin’, doing such a thing?”
“The heavens are eternal. He thought to draw from that power, to use the link the creatures have to the moon to find a cure for the king.”
“Nay, he finally found a means to become immortal himself, or so he thinked.”
Dyadia turned away. “He spoke to a drasilisk’s spirit,” she began, her voice breaking in intervals, “and it told him of a nest of eggs . . . he concocted a determinate elixir with some scales he had saved to find their whereabouts. It transported him to the cliffs by the ocean where he found them hidden. They . . . were the only survivors. My son connected himself to the nestlings mentally, climbed inside their minds. Stole their link to the moon and learned how to manipulate it himself.” She spun to face Crony. “I tried to reason with him, to warn him of the dangers, but he wouldn’t listen. A few days ago, they began hatching. I thought he would come to his senses then, but he was emotionally attached and convinced they felt the same, that he could raise and control them. And not only would he be immortal, but ours would be the most powerful kingdom.” Her slitted pupils dropped to the hem of her swishing dress. “I tried to intervene for his own safety, for everyone’s safety. I cast a spell upon the eggs—a quietus thrall—to fool their minds into thinking they were already dead, to prevent them from growing strong enough to break out. In my haste, I forgot the most crucial precept: that it should only be conjured in a sacred place of life and death, else the recipient’s spirit grows fearful. Once a spirit gives up faith, all is lost. I didn’t mean for it to be fatal, but they’re dying.”
Crony leaned across one cracked egg and shuddered as a glint of firelight reflected off deadened eyes and glimmering coiled scales. “How ye be sure?”
“Because my son is part of them now. He can’t disconnect. I realized it when he fell to the floor and struggled for breath. He’s dying, too. At his mother’s own hand—” Her voice cracked and she clutched her chest, as if she could feel her insides tearing apart.
Crony shielded her own chest with her staff, putting up barriers. Her friend grasped her wrist, tears streaming down her beautiful striped face, several leaking from the empty socket in the midst of her forehead. “You must know what I need of you.”
The witch’s stomach turned and twisted, torn between pity and self-preservation. “And ye know why I can’t be givin’ it.”
The sorceress fell to her knees and gripped Crony’s ankles, her fingers too fine and elegant to put a dent in Crony’s thick, rough skin. Was she as calloused inward as outward? So much she could say no to the one who meant most to her in the world? Was she such a coward, she couldn’t trade her immortality for another’s son? Didn’t that make her no better than he in his search to live forever?
“Please. My love . . . my life, everything I have is yours and always will be. But I cannot live with killing my child. Please,” she sobbed. “You must bid him back.”
The memory became too real, and Crony stalled the narrative for fear of saying too much to Luce, or worse, that the acid rising in the back of her throat would seep into her tongue and render it as mute as little Stain’s. She met her sylphin companion’s gaze. He waited, silent and mortified, for the end.
“I deemed me dearest’s son unworthy of bein’ saved,” she told Luce, her vocal cords no longer cooperating, cutting her voice to a whisper. “But even worse, I kept it quiet in me heart. I knew, to bring him back from the brink, I be bringing back the drasilisks with him. I knew he had to be destroyed to save the kingdoms.” Crony didn’t tell Luce the ugliest part, that she was a coward who justified her cowardice by telling herself it was a black-and-white choice. By convincing herself there was no gray. “I pretended I be willin’ to help him, only to get close enough to steal his last few breaths and lock the memories he’d shared with the creatures in me own mind, so I could break their hold o’er the moon. That I did, with Dyadia standing there beside me, trusting me, thinkin’ I was to save her only child’s life. Thanking me as I was takin’ his last breaths away.”
Crony’s tongue prickled on the admission, each word stinging like a shard of glass. “She knew what I’d done in the same instant I realized the catastrophe me thievery had caused, for in breakin’ Lachrymosa’s connection to the creatures and his hold over the moon, I left the heavens in an uproar.”
Neither she nor Dyadia had expected what happened next, that the moon would fall from the sky, still tied to the threads she’d severed. That it would tear through the earth and drag Nerezeth down with it. As the castle walls began to shake, Dyadia met her gaze and Crony saw agonized perception. She would never forget that look.
Crony had started up the stairs as debris tumbled from the ceiling all around—running from her guilt, from her fear, from her self-deprecation. But she couldn’t outrun those final memories she’d stolen from Lachrymosa. One of which she could ne’er share for its power and potency, as it was still tied to the moon. It would stay locked within her for the entirety of that long lonely forever she’d chosen over a man’s life and her dearest one’s heart.
Dyadia followed Crony through the corridors as they passed confused royalty and guards alike. Thana was waiting when the giant doors opened to reveal the drawbridge leading to a landscape in turmoil. Trees, hills, and rivers shivered as if they were painted on flimsy parchment and set aflutter on the wind. Thana screeched at Crony and flew to her mistress’s side where Dyadia stood at the threshold. Crony stepped off the bridge and looked down on them when the castle began to sink and the world shook. Trees crumpled forward as if bowing to the moon as it glided into the open seam of the earth—as it magically converted to smoke and clouds, then siphoned through the crack. Then it was gone, pulling with it all of Nerezeth’s terrain, the forest, the castle in the same fashion.
Crony and the landscapes that belonged to Eldoria were untouched. Somehow the moon knew who belonged to it, to the one who’d been controlling it. Every creature that loved the darkness, and everything that had ever been a part of Lachrymosa’s territory, slipped away and took form again within the belly of the earth. There to stay, along with Dyadia and all her righteous rage.
When the dust settled and the sun beamed down—hot and accusatory on Crony’s back—all that indicated Nerezeth had ever stood beside Eldoria was the crack between realms, still glittering with broken magic that would form the ravine. At first, the kingdoms had no contact with one another. Eldoria despised Nerezeth for taking the moon. But in time, after hearing of the harsh conditions the night realm endured, Eldorians came to feel superior. They believed Nerezeth deserved their eternal night for their sorcerer’s vile actions. In turn, Nerezeth hated the day realm for their apathy, and envied them their sun.