The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft
ALL ON THE TABLE

CH ALL ON THE TABLE

The room around them looked like a fractal equation had been built out of gold, obsidian, charged glass, and energy stones, half stones, and quarter stones. The Chronos Energy Storage Crystals were inset in some of the quarter stones, creating a lattice of energy. Yuri could see the Shadows trying to break through it.

Kneeling on the golden stones, Yuri whispered to her, “Fleur... Daisy... wake up. I know you’re hurt but we need your light.” He poured a healing potion on her wound and used his heart heal magic to bolster her life-glow.

Her eyes fluttered open. “I don’t have my light, you do.” Her head rolled to one side. “Just let me die, Yuri.”

“I can’t, we need you to get us home; the children need you to save them.” He licked her blood from his hand and began to glow. “I’ll share your light with you, but I don’t know how to use it like you do, I don’t know the math.”

“Please, Daisy,” Karstien begged, “I can’t hold them, and we aren’t traveling.” At the four entry arches, warriors fought against the encroaching undeads.

The Dark Oracle’s eyes flew open as she inhaled deeply. Yuri felt the part of her soul he had carried for so long tug painfully like a wound tearing open. She pushed herself up, glowing with oracle light as dark magic crackled around her like black static. Tendrils of shadow flowed out from her. People pushed against each other trying to give her space, but there was nowhere for them to go.

“Release us and return home.” The Dark Oracle ordered the shadows as a shell of dark energy swirling with iridescent oracle white appeared outside of the one created by Karstien’s Flame. The shadows pulled away and the Relic of Time hummed, followed by the familiar flash. They were hurling toward the future when two small boys pushed through the crowded mass to the Dark Oracle, neither seemed afraid of her as the adults did.

“Lady Fleur, our father?” The slightly taller one asked as they hugged her. The Dark Oracle’s eyes fluttered closed, the blackness of them was fading as were her scars and hair while she pushed every bit of dark energy into the shield around them and boosting the Relic. When her eyes opened, they were scared white and blind.

“Meteri, Tori, I... I don’t know what happened to Tangriel. I lost him as we returned from setting the trap for the Devourer.” She looked toward Yuri. “When you were fighting the undeads, and I was struck, where was Tangriel?”

Yuri swallowed, looked at the boys, and then lied, “He was fighting when you were hurt, he told me to save you. Your father fought bravely and died with honor defending those he loved. One of the last things he said to me was that he wanted to find a good mother for you boys.”

“Lady Fluer can be our mother,” Meteri said as Fleur swayed.

“I would like that,” she smiled weakly before she sagged to one knee, hugging them both.

“Lady Fleur is bleeding black and red.” Tori held out his hand.

The black blood floated up following the stream of dark magic. Fleur coughed and fell forward, convulsing as the dark magic and oracle magic continued to feed the protective shell and Relic. Some of the shadows continued to cling to it, trying to break in.

“Shadz!” Yuri shouted as the glowing mage pushed toward them. Yuri cradled Fleur against him. “I poured a healing potion on her wound, but it isn’t working”

“She won’t heal properly until we get rid of the darkness that flows in her blood. Asha has Water of Light waiting. Just hold on, Daisy.” Shadz knelt next to her.

Fleur-Daisy pushed the boys toward him. “Shadz, these are my friend Tangriel’s sons, tell Asha I said to love them as her own.”

“We will, my lady, and you will too. Just hold on.” Shadz poured Asha’s healing power into her mother, praying to the Light she would survive.

“I’m out of darkness.” Fleur whispered.

The dome glowed brilliant oracle white and the remaining shadows faded into nothing.

Fleur looked over toward the Relic, and whispered, “We’re almost there, old friend.”

There was a second flash and they were in the future.

A fractal dome appeared in the middle of the field. Guardsmen rushed forward, shouting at the refugees to run for the escape portals before the chamber exploded. They had escaped the cataclysm of their time to face an uncertain first few moments in the future.

People ran away from the chamber to those who waited to help them get to safety. The Flame of Aetheria flicked out as Karstien collapsed to his knees too weak to even stand. The dome of oracle light faded too. Every trace of dark and light magic was gone from Fleur’s flesh. As Fleur’s heart stuttered its last beat, the Relic of Time fell silent. Instead of exploding, it simply collapsed into a heap of golden dust and charged glass shards with its clock face toward its oracle as both died.

"Stay with us, Daisy!" Yuri began doing CPR on her body as he had on wounded human warriors during the last war, trying to save his oracle when healing magic wouldn’t work. While his body worked the mechanics of resuscitation, his soul pulled Fleur into her Room of Light with the last of the blood magic.

He was horrified at the state of it; the walls were cracked and charred, the clear floor strewn with debris, below them appeared a vortex of darkness like a great whirlpool, and above them, he could see the starry sky and the golden-white of the celestial veil moving like a curtain in a gentle breeze.

“This is cheating, Yuri, I know because I did the same thing when Kaleth died.” Fleur-Daisy’s voice came from behind him.

“Why isn’t your room within the veil?” He gaped at the view above.

“I no longer deserve a place with the oracles and celestials, my soul is tainted. My purpose is done, and I can now be discarded like all things that have no further use by the House of Adamos” Her voice was so calm and matter-of-fact, he turned to face her.

He was unprepared for what he saw. Her normally beautiful lavender gown was a shredded, soiled gray rag, her hair was matted and filthy, her scars shifted from pale to dark but were mostly a mottle gray like a corpse’s skin, and her eyes... Her beautiful lavender eyes that he had loved more than anything about her, had dulled to the color of smoke at sunset.

“What happened to you?” He demanded in horror.

“You won’t let me die!” She screamed at him.

“I... can’t.”

“Do you hate me so much that you won’t even let me die in peace?” She sobbed out. “Don’t you understand? You’re free now. No more duty. No more taking care of crazy Daisy because your father told you to. Like he t-told K-k-kaleth to...” She sank to her knees and began to beat her fists on the glass floor.

Yuri bent down and seized her hands to make her stop. “Please, Daisy, I love you.”

“Stop it. Stop saying that.” She whispered brokenly then she jerked away violently and shrieked, flinging her words at him like daggers. “Stop saying that lie! I know the truth, I overheard Adamos order you to love me. I heard him say he would make Kaleth do his duty.”

Yuri’s mind raced, and Daisy smirked at his confusion. “Karstien came to the Tear site with Odini and Regulus, you fought with your father about me, about what I was. What I really am... not a special kind of oracle, but a concubine... breeding stock... the Whore of the House of Adamos. You never loved me, I was just your duty until I gave you a son. Kaleth never loved me, I was a mistake of misused magic that he was forced to endure for centuries. I... I wish he had forever killed me when he had blood magic poisoning, it would have saved me from so much suffering. But that’s what Adamos wanted wasn’t it? For me to suffer, for me to stay broken, he said I was made that way, I heard him say it and Karstien told everyone that the truth would break me. He was right, I am at my end and all I have are my scars.” She yanked the stone from around her neck, threw is at Yuri’s chest, then hissed, “Every moment of my life from the second I put on your wretched stone has been a lie. And. I. Am. Done.”

She turned her face up toward the Celestial Veil and screamed as loud as she could. “I’m done, Adamos. Find someone else to birth Yuri’s heir because I refuse.” Pieces of the walls broke and fell into the vortex below. Cracks began appearing in the floor. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared down at the vortex, whispering, “Release me so I can die now.”

“I won’t, I love you,” Yuri repeated.

She shook her head slowly, “Your family is saved. The timeline restored. The Devourer remains defeated. You don’t have to pretend any more, or have you lied to yourself for so long that you have begun to believe the lie?” She laughed; it was a cruelly mirthless sound. “Remember the truth, Yuri, think back to when your soul told me the truth, when your cruelty spoke more than words. You hate me.”

He held out his hands to her in a helpless gesture. “Daisy, you cannot say how my soul feels now. So much time has passed. I regretted my actions then, and every year since then, even when I couldn’t admit my feelings, I loved and still love you.”

“Then why lie? Why use the memory obscuring magic to hide things from me, like Kaleth did.”

“You know about the obscuring magic?” He looked around alarmed as more pieces of the floor and walls fell away.

She smirked again, her voice was cold. “How do you think I hid the fact that I knew the truth when I did the soul shield enchantment? I had known for months that your feelings, Kaleth’s feelings, Karstien’s friendship, and even Adamos’ concerns were all lies to save your house and the remnant. That’s why it was so easy to pick up the mantel of the Dark Oracle; I hated you all because I heard the truth in Adamos’ own voice and your own casual words confirmed that you have lied to me for over a century about remembering.”

“How did my words confirm it?” he demanded. In his exterior mind, he was aware that they had been moved to the Healer’s Hall.

“Magic doesn’t make up for poor skill.” She quoted.

“What?”

“One day on the Tear, you said it. Abe and Regis laughed that Regulus would be happy that one of his students had learned one of his teachings. You have said it since you were restored, if you had true amnesia, you wouldn’t have remembered your mentor’s favorite teaching.” She cocked her head to one side, listening then snorted derisively. “Keeping me here doesn’t mean I will choose to live after the surgery.”

“Please, Daisy, think of your and Kaleth’s children...” Yuri begged.

She narrowed her eyes at him, “Were you ever really Kaleth’s friend? Did you tell him what we did in the past? You knew he was going to die, you could have stopped it.”

“I loved my brother! I didn’t tell him, but he somehow knew what happened between us in the past. He knew everything... And you know why we couldn’t stop his death, you yourself came back through time to tell us to let it happen,” Yuri reminded.

“Well, now... it’s all on the table.” Fresh tears fell down her face. “The one I loved for four centuries and grieved for more than one, knew I was just a breeding whore for his house. Part of me had hoped he didn’t know, that he might have actually loved me.” She choked on a sob. “Thank you for confirming it.”

“Daisy... I didn’t... that not what I meant... Kaleth loved you.”

“Whatever... You can go, Yuri. You’re free now.” She whispered as the room shattered around them and the sound he heard was a medical alarm signaling a patient dying.

Yuri shouted for her and there was a second flash of white light. Blinking, Yurieth looked up and saw his father with tears running down his face.

“Son, I am so sorry.”

Yuri roared and charged at him, trying to strangle him, “You did this. You destroyed her!”

Strong arms pulled Yuri off Adamos, shoved him back, “Enough, brother.”

“Kaleth?” His youngest brother stood there in his Celestial Armor with their mother beside him.

Yuri raged, “How can you defend him? Didn’t you see what happened? What she will die believing?”

Yllumina stepped forward, tears were running down her cheeks, “We saw it, Yurieth... This wasn’t what was meant to be... We don’t know how she came to believe this... to be this broken... We are sorry.”

“Daisy won’t die,” Kaleth said calmly. “Her will is too strong.”

Yuri stared at his brother like he had lost his mind. “Her will? Her will has already given up! Her heart is broken beyond repair! She believes you never loved her, not for a moment. That you used magic to trick her. That we all did and she is correct, because it is true, we all used magic to deceive her. She calls herself our concubine, the Whore of the House of Adamos! Are you deluded enough in your exalted state to believe she can ever recover from that?”

Tears leaked from Kaleth's amber eyes into his golden beard. “No. She may never believe in my love for her again, but you still live, you still have a chance to change her mind. Prove to her that she is your hope, that she is worthy of love above all and that you will love her for all time. Take care of her.”

“Yurieth...” Adamos started.

“Don’t, father, I have nothing left to say to you.” Yuri snarled at Adamos.

Yllumina touched Yurieth’s arm. “Hope endures as long as love lives, my son, don’t let them convince you that yours died.”

Suddenly Yuri opened his eyes, he was laying on a bed in the Healer’s Hall. He jerked upright.

“Easy, Lord Yurieth. We almost lost you when the Oracle nearly died,” Elder Miles said softly.

“Why are you speaking instead of using telepathy?” Yuri murmured. He had never heard the ancient healer’s voice before, it was as deep as Shadz’s, but very soothing.

“Because you wouldn’t be able to hear me, you are suffering from soul shock. Lady Asha believes that the part of Lady Daisy’s soul you carried after the Veil of Hope and Soul Shield Enchantments tore, instead of being released and returning to her. It was as if that part of her soul itself rejected being separated from yours. Daisy’s soul is no longer whole. Lady Serapha told us there was a point in the past where your souls were knotted together. We think there was some scarring that affected the enchantment.”

“If I still carry part of her soul, why can’t I feel her?” Yuri demanded, terrified that the answer would be that Daisy had died later.

“None of us can. She is in a coma; her life-glow is the weakest we have ever seen. Her body is surgically repaired and healing slowly, but her soul may never fully recover. It appears she suffered some additional spiritual trauma in the past. Do you know what that might be?” Miles entreated.

Yuri sighed. “There was so much...”

“Just tell him,” Shadz snapped, walking into the room, and glaring at Yuri.

Karstien was standing over his shoulder, “Easy, Shadz.”

Yuri clenched his jaw then spat his rage at them. “In the last year, Daisy was attacked by shadows several times, rendered blind, led to believe that her entire existence was a lie based on my father’s manipulations, then in the last month alone, she was indwelt by the Dark Queen entity, had to carry the Darkness for weeks, felt two worlds turned into wastelands, and experienced nearly thirty million souls harvested by the Devourer. Then the Assassin who claimed he loved her tried to kill me and almost murdered her instead. While we were in the Room of Light as she was having surgery, she told me she believed that my brother never loved her, I never loved her, that you, Karstien, were never really her friend, and that she was just a breeding whore for our house before begging me to let her soul go so she could die. So yes, Elder Healer Miles, there has been... some... additional... spiritual... trauma.” They stared at him speechlessly as he threw off the covers and looked around for his clothes. “I want to see her.”

“I can’t let you do that, Lord Yurieth.” Miles stated calmly, then held up his hand when Yuri started to protest. “She is in an extremely fragile state. If she believes such negative things about you, it would be best for the oracle to not sense your energy.”

“I’ll sit with her,” Karstien offered.

“I am sorry, my king, but in light of this information, you also need to be absent from her side. If she wakes and asks for either of you, we will summon you immediately.” Miles opened a drawer and pulled out a simple set of pants and shirt, “Lady Serapha brought these for you this morning. She said to tell you that you are welcome to stay in their estate or in the family wing at the palace with your nephew and niece while we wait for the Oracle to heal.”

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