The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft
THE TEMPTATION OF A BROKEN ORACLE

CH THE TEMPTATION OF A BROKEN ORACLE

Standing alone in the room of light, Fleur looked down at the lavender gown she always seemed to be wearing in this place beyond reality; it was gray now as it had been after Kaleth’s death, and as torn and stained as she felt inside. Her scars and hair were oil black and glossy. She looked nothing like she did at home.

On one wall, she watched all the memories of her life with Kaleth, knowing what she did now, everything between them became suspect. She knew that on the day she had met Adamos and Kaleth for her first time, the day they had lost Damien to the Shadows, on that day Adamos must have already known who she was in spite of the thousands of years that separated his death from her birth. He had sent Kaleth to take her home and give her the oracle stone that started her on this path. She had loved Kaleth with everything in her soul but now she questioned whether or not he had ever loved her. Adamos had said Kaleth would do his duty.

The centuries Kaleth distanced himself from her seemed more sinister. She had thought his guilt over killing her and the trauma of the Blood Magic Cure was what built the walls between them, but what if he had realized that he didn’t want to do his father’s bidding anymore, like the way Yuri resisted. They shared a home and a child, but he showed her no more love than a roommate and he left as often as he could. Work had filled the place where her pain and loneliness lived; he had only started showing he loved her again when she had almost died of self-neglect. All those centuries together, and she had not known she was simply his duty. Remembering his memorial, and the thousands of Aetherians and Humans who had released lanterns in his honor, Fleur wanted to scream out her heartache. She was glad she wouldn’t go home to the future, or she might tell the truth, and their children deserved to always believe that she and their father had loved each other.

The Darkness whispered to her to avenge her betrayal, “You know it was all a lie, why do you make yourself weak with concern for those who betrayed you when you have the power to avenge your pain?”

Fleur turned slowly, there was a woman standing there that Fleur had never met but knew instantly who she was. The woman’s shadow hair seemed to float around from some unseen breeze, her skin was matte black like the dark dust, but her eyes burned, flickering like a fire burned inside her skull.

Fleur knew better than to be afraid. “You must be the Siren Queen, come to indwell your vessel and open the Gate of the Devourer so all that is living in the universe will be consumed.”

“And you are the Dark Oracle, but you are not what you seem, or you would have accepted me immediately.” The entity walked around and sat down. She seemed genuinely curious about Room of Light. “What is this place?”

Fleur sighed and looked around, there was no use in trying to deceive the Siren Queen. “It is a place within the Celestial Veils where oracles come to rest and soothe their souls. Don’t your sirens have such a place in the Dark Realm?” It didn’t answer her question.

“You loved him until his death, gave him children, devotion, and it was all based on falsehood. Now, you love this one and face the same dilemma.” The queen lifted her hand and image of Kaleth and then Yurieth appeared. “I can see why you would find them desirable. They are excellent physical specimens. Strong and beautiful to behold, a Queen could get used to such companionship.”

“I have seen what you would do with them, they would resist you,” Fleur retorted calmly.

“Perhaps, but with my power, they could be swayed... Well, the one that still lives could be.” Glossy burning eyes regarded Fleur. “But you already know the pleasure sharing his body brings.”

“Love is more fulfilling than just sex and lust.” Fleur’s mouth turned down as the Siren Queen laughed.

The Queen tipped its head, smirking. “Feeding from a willing lover’s soul and blood at the height of passion is its own form of fulfillment.”

“What are you?” Fleur asked curiously, “You’re not an Aetherian or a Xelusian, neither is the Lord of Shadows nor the Devourer.”

“We... My lord and I are whatever we want to be within our host bodies. We are the embodiment of the desires of our servants. We give them their every desire and they feed us.” The Queen smiled, and its teeth looked like polished onyx. “If you want him instead of the Xelusian prince, I will tell my Shadow to claim him for you and he will love you as you love him.”

Images of Fleur and Yurieth together appeared, he professed his undying love on his knees and bowed before her. It was ridiculous and contrived. Fleur waved her hand and the image froze.

“It would be a lie. That wouldn’t be love, it would be coercion.” Fleur mirthlessly laughed as she said it, thinking about how Adamos had ordered Yurieth to love her and probably did the same to Kaleth. Those who served the Light were the sworn enemies of the Darkness and yet they used the same tactics.

“You’re very bitter, Dark Oracle, I can taste it in your soul like a pungent spice. Let me teach you how to turn your pain into real power as I did your predecessor,” The Siren Queen promised.

Fluer shook her head slowly. “I am already as powerful as I need to be to stop you. I am figuring out what you are.”

The Queen’s polished onyx teeth flashed, “And what am I? A sorceress? A temptress? A demon? You have such small definitions of things in the many languages you know. I am much more than mere words can describe, and you could be too, my daughter.”

“You offer me nothing I don’t already possess.” Fleur announced. “The power you offer is an illusion for the desperate, because you and I both know that magic is only limited by the wielder possessed. That is why you want me, the power I can tap is almost limitless, but it won’t work for you because you don’t know how to love.”

“If your power is so wonderful then heal your eyes. You can’t, can you?” The queen walked over and put its hands over Fleur’s eyes. They burned cold like when she had been submerged in the Essence of Darkness liquid. When it stepped back, Fleur could feel the freezing liquid weeping from her eyes as its hands cupped her cheeks. “When we leave this place, you will be able to see again.” The entity promised.

Moving rapidly, Fleur seized the dark entity’s wrists. “See falsely... And we are not going anywhere together except to the Gate, so you can return home.”

Fiery eyes narrowed into slits. “You would deny me?”

Clouded white eyes that saw clearly in this place blinked against the coldness, “It’s not a refusal if you offer nothing.”

“But I can give you everything, teach you about power, provide planets to rule, and even bring the one you love back to you. You are alone with no one to trust or love, dual wielder, you cannot continue to siphon off the Dark Powers as your Light wanes and not expect to submit to me. Without your vaulted love, you weaken every day.” The entity hissed, its hair thrashed with its anger as though it were in a violent wind.

“My light will be enough for me to do what I have set my will to do because the ones I love are beyond your reach, entity.” Fleur said as she shoved the Siren Queen backwards. Suddenly, ribbons of Light wrapped the queen, subduing it, and it screamed as Fleur had once done when wrapped in chains of Darkness.

The Siren Queen panted out, “I know they both betrayed you. They both killed you, your sealed ones broke one of your people’s highest laws to cause you the pain of death and revival. They never loved you, only lied to use you. They should be punished, the Huntsman should be punished, and you are too weak to punish him without me.”

“I don’t need to punish Yurieth. I do not have the right to demand that he love me back as I love him... He should be free to love whomever his heart chooses.” Fleur whispered painfully. “I want only for his happiness and freedom to find love and hope.”

“You are a foolish girl,” it snarled.

Shrugging, Fleur answered, “My pain is my choice, my misery is the burden of knowing they were forced to pretend to love me. It is anguish and I will admit I want to rage. I want to destroy worlds, but I will settle for destroying yours and to delay your master from emerging before I die. Your imprisonment will be enough consolation for my sacrifice. I may be a blind oracle, but I can see my path plainly.” Fleur reached out and touched the frozen image of Yurieth, he was so beautiful to her and she loved him so much, as much as she loved Kaleth when he lived. A real tear ran down her cheek as she whispered, “I would sacrifice my soul to save the one who doesn’t love me because I love him. Tell me, Dust Queen, what would you sacrifice for your Lord of Shadows? Would you forever die for the Devourer?”

“Release me, child of Light!” The creature struggled and thrashed.

“All in good time, I will release you beyond the Gate, I suggest you hide there unless you want to die on this side with this world.” Fleur walked to where the queen writhed, she cupped its face and kissed it lightly in the forehead. “I will even save your next host to be born of a future oracle.”

“What are you going to do?” The creature hissed at her and Fleur looked down on it with solid black eyes.

“I am sparing you.” Fleur announced. “Because you were spared when this planet ended, and its star was shattered.” It gasped and would have pulled back if it could.

“What are you talking about?” The Siren Queen had quit struggling and was staring at Fleur.

“The future, oh queen of shadows. I am an oracle, remember?” Fleur answered flippantly.

The walls of the room were suddenly covered in numbers and symbols.

“Here’s the math of my magic. If you can figure it out and escape before I take you to the Gate, I might let you stop me.” Fleur laughed, she vanished from her Room of Light as the Siren Queen Entity screamed in futile rage.

Fleur opened her eyes in the queen’s chambers and sat up. She could see everything in tones of gray.

Lady Naphtala and Mina gaped at her. Regis and the Assassin she had seen talking to Demona both had their swords in hand. Karstien was cautious as he approached, the Flame of Aetheria flickered in his hands.

“Fleur?”

She blinked. “This sight is strange, everything is in grayscale,” she said, looking around. Black tears wept from her eyes, leaving tracks down her cheeks.

Karstien narrowed his eyes at her. “Who are you?”

“A human girl who only wanted for you to have true love, my king. A girl who went looking for your answers and found Atlantis.”

Karstien hugged her in relief, “By the Light, when you opened your eyes... I... I thought the entity had overcome you.”

“I have her a little tied up. She has to get through my math to escape.” Fleur smiled mischievously, then inhaled and exhaled with resolve. “Has the sun set yet? Do we have a portal back to Aetheria ?”

“Yes to both, Dark Oracle.” The Assassin answered, he held out his gloved hand, “I am Sangriel of the Blood Brotherhood.” Fleur grasped his arm as was customary and he continued. “The prince is in meetings planning the war to come. Princess Serapha and Princess Demona are in adjoining cells below the temple.”

“Leave Demona, she will be safer there than wandering around. We need to spring Serapha so she and Yllumina can make the water of light.” Fleur turned to Karstien. “The ‘Against Hope’?”

The future king’s jaw clenched. “In Lady Naphtala’s chamber with Uncle Abe.”

Fleur nodded and walked out onto the balcony, down the street she could see the main avenue to the city in one direction and the Blood Temple in the other. She wondered if the Xelusians had realized or remembered that the entire temple was built around the foundation pillars of the prison door of a malevolent entity. “I need to go put the queen back on the other side of the Gate before we plant the device, so she won’t be able to tell the future what we did. Then I...”

“Are you mad?” Naphtala demanded. “No one returns from the other side of the Gate.”

Fleur smirked at her. “I have several times, Lady Naphtala. It’s a mind trap. The trick is not to get seduced by the promises of what lives on the other side.” She turned to look at her mother by joining. “Mina, you and Serapha need to do the ritual to protect Abrieth tonight, then Yurieth...”

“Fleur, I won’t have enough magic to do them both the same day, even with Karstien and Serapha,” Yllumina frowned, and admitted, “My soul is grieving for Adamos, I did not realize how quickly it would weaken me.”

Fleur made a face, Karstien could almost see her doing the math. “Then I’ll put the queen on the other side of the Gate tonight, and I’ll perform the ritual for Yurieth tomorrow when I’ve rested a little. After I finish with the Ceremony to introduce me formally as the Queen at sunset tomorrow, and we set the device, then Demona is going to escape and kill me.”

Karstien trembled before he said, “You don’t have to die. We can find...”

“No, Karstien. This will happen because it did happen.” She snapped in her birth language, in a softer tone, she added, “You can’t save me this time.”

“My lady, my father and brother Huntsman are bringing the King for a stealth attack. The King wants to return you to Aetheria before the Assault Forces arrive to wage war... They have a plan to make it look like Xerxes was killed in the rescue of Queen Eonae. All the Aetherians save Yurieth and Abrieth will return home before the event happens, Lord Yurieth doesn’t want them to die on Xelusia. He believes they should be with their families.”

Fleur nodded. “When will they arrive?” She crossed her arms thoughtfully.

“They landed an hour ago and are working their way to the City. They will be here by morning. The queen will come through the portal after my father kills Xerxes. He will return with her to Aetheria while Yurieth tries to rescue you or that is what they will tell our people,” Regis finished.

“Can your father delay the King until tomorrow evening? Perhaps we can get Lucif and Xerxes to kill each other when they find me dead, then Regulus won’t have to commit treason...” She drummed her ebony nails on her elbow in a contemplative gesture. “And if Demona is unconscious here in my chambers then she will be blamed and the Xelusians will fall into civil war.”

“That is a clever plan, Dark Oracle,” Sangriel complimented.

“It will require careful timing,” Naphtala pointed out.

“Time we don’t have,” Mina reminded.

Fleur looked toward the Temple, “Karstien, what about the last of the children?”

“Being gathered by Lord Oren and Cinna,” Karstien answered.

Fleur closed her eyes, in two days it would all be over.

Karstien put his hand on her arm, whispering in the language of their birth world, “Daisy, please don’t do this...”

She couldn’t look at him because she wanted to drag the truth out of him, find out if he knew and for how long, but she couldn’t yet, so she fixed her eyes on the Gate. “This is what I was made for, Kars.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because it’s the truth. My destiny has always been to die for our house, like your father.” Fleur turned away from him.

Fleur knew Adamos had planned for her to be a breeder for Kaleth or rather Yuri but mistakes happened, and a weapon for Karstien. She had fulfilled one task and now she would fulfill the second. Remembering the conversation, she had overheard on the Tear, she realized the truth of her existence had broken her soul more than all the heartaches and tortures she had suffered during the last war or her life before it. She was tempted to go back to the future just so she could take the Seeker with her children, and leave Aetheria forever out of spite. But that wouldn’t be fair to her children and the lives they believed they had. Lives she had helped build for them. Lives built on their grandfather’s manipulation and the lie of their father’s love for their mother. She loved them enough to leave them to their happiness and carry all the misery into whatever afterlife awaited her.

“Lady Naphtala, please bring the Prince to the Gate, I want Lucif and his advisors to see me step back out so they will believe I am the Siren Queen.”

A series of stepping glyphs appeared, and the Dark Oracle walked through the air toward the Blood Temple and the Gate of Shadows. The black silk layers skirt floated around her legs. The halter-style top showed off her darkened scars. Below her, in the street, a commotion started as the Xelusians pointed and shouted in surprise. “The Queen!”

Fleur felt no fear about stepping through into the dark dust dimension. There was nothing the demons there could offer her that could tempt her from the plan she had set her will to accomplish.

Demons?

Pausing, she thought about the old name and its origin; the creatures she faced were so much worse than what she had learned in Catechism. She had come so far from the young orphan girl in a mental hospital learning to sing hymns and prayers from an old Catholic cleaning lady. Would the God she had always prayed to, even after her transformation into an Aetherian, still let her into heaven after everything she was about to do? Her mind chanted her favorite prayer by Saint Francis of Assisi one last time, and she whispered out last line.

“It is in dying that we are born to eternal life, amen. Forgive me, Father.”

Fleur set her resolve to do what she must as she held her hand up to the undulating black surface. In her reflection, she could see real tears mixed with the black water leaking from her eyes. She looked terrifyingly condemned. There was no going back.

“For my children," she declared firmly.

Then she stepped through into the Dark Dust Dimension.

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