The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

The carriage came to a stop before the Academy. The driver stepped down and opened the door for us, and then he bowed. He bowed to both of us and held the bow until we had both stepped down.

Ash lingered by the man and said something to him that I did not catch. Whatever it was, the man smiled. He nodded twice and climbed back to his seat with more spring in him than he'd had when we set out.

Ash joined me, and together we looked up at the Academy. It was late. The streets on the ride back had been largely empty, and the great building above us was dark save for scattered squares of lantern light. Ash pointed at my head. "She's enjoying herself."

"Indeed she is." Sol had not so much as stirred in some time. I checked the bond, as I had been checking it the whole ride back, and found only deep sleep. She had eaten something many times her size. I supposed she had earned it.

The gates gleamed under the lanterns. Two guards stood before them, and the first noticed us at a distance.

"Halt," he said. Then he squinted as we came closer, and his squint deepened. The second guard leaned in and whispered something into his ear. The first guard's eyes went wide.

The man still hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded. They both stepped aside. "My apologies, I did not recognize the two Consecrated," he said. We walked past them. The men gave us looks as we passed.

The massive gate opened into an empty yard. When we had first arrived at this place, it had been full of students. It had been bright then. Now there was only lamplight and the sound of our own steps.

"Don't tell me we're going to go straight to the chamber," Ash murmured.

"That was the intention, yes." I kept walking.

"Lys. I am starving." She caught up in two strides. "Besides, we're going to need supplies, don't we? The door can't be opened from the outside. I doubt the Archon meant for us to just walk in on an empty stomach."

I considered this. It was an obvious thing, once the Hero pointed it out. I simply had not thought of it myself. In my old life there had been [Inventory], and if for some reason [Inventory] was not enough, there had been servants. "Very well," I said. "Though I doubt this mess hall will still have food at this hour."

"You can leave that part to me." Ash grinned.

I followed the Hero's lead.

The mess hall was quiet. It was quiet, and for once the quiet had nothing to do with me. It was simply empty. Two students sat far in the distance and the great room of benches stretched vacant between us and them. I supposed I had not minded the sounds here. Seeing it like this was simply strange.

Ash was at the counter, speaking to the broad woman behind it. "You need to mix in three spoons of mapleroot for every two spoons of sugar," Ash was saying. "It works for just about any headache. Trust me, Marissa. I don't know where you'd find something like that around here, but I bet you can. I used to have the same thing when I didn't sleep right. Probably not the healthiest for you long-term, but it'll help."

The large woman nodded along, a ladle in one hand. "Never heard that one before. Damn, I need to try it. Bet I can get one of those merchants down in the lower third to get me some mapleroot, alright." She snorted. "Not like these Academy buggers pay me what I'm owed anyway."

Ash smiled at that, and then she was scooping up three bowls of porridge. Beside them sat a small pouch, filled with strips of raw meat. Beside that was a larger bag that had bread, more meat, and several waterskins. We carried it all to one of the empty tables and sat.

I was looking at Ash. She noticed. "What?" She slid two of the bowls toward me.

"How did you convince her to cook at this hour?" I asked. "Unless I am mistaken, that woman was just about to leave."

"Hmm?" Ash tilted her head. "Oh, Marissa? I've talked to her once or twice. She's a nice lady. Just needs someone who'll listen."

"And this listening got us food at this hour?"

Ash pointed at Sol, asleep between my horns. "Remember when she hatched?" I nodded. "How'd you think I got you meat in the middle of the night, then?"

Ah. So that had been the Hero's secret all along. I reached up and lifted Sol down with both hands, gently, and set her on the table beside my bowls. She yawned in her sleep but did not wake. Then I drew the meat pouch close. I slid my left hand inside it, and let Bloom pour through the strips until every one of them met her standard. I set the pouch beside her.

"This listening is a rather powerful skill, Hero," I said. "I will learn it from you."

Ash smiled. "You know more about it than you think, Lys."

I raised an eyebrow at her. She did not explain herself, and so I ate my porridge instead. I finished the first bowl before Ash had properly started hers. "You know, Ash. It is strange."

She looked up at me. "When I first had these foods, I thought I could never taste anything better. From the bread, to the porridge, when I first ate them, they had all tasted like the finest things I had ever eaten," I turned the spoon in the second bowl. "Yet the more I have them, the more they become..." I searched for the word and could not find one worthy of it.

"The more normal it gets?" Ash asked.

"Precisely," I said. "It is quite vexing."

"You haven't felt this before?"

"Not with food," I said. "I did not think it would apply to something so simple." We ate in silence for a time. It was a good silence.

"I don't think it's a bad thing," Ash said eventually. "It makes you want to keep going out and exploring. To find new things. Would be a shame if you were so content that you stayed in one place."

I considered that. There was some strange sense in the words. My life before had been many shades of the same thing. "I suppose there is some merit to it, Ash," I said. We finished eating. And then we both looked at Sol.

She had not moved. Her four wings were tucked against her sides, and her breathing was slow and even. I had been checking the bond every minute or so. Each time it told me the same thing. Nothing was wrong with her. She was simply asleep, more deeply asleep than I had ever felt her. I reached out and poked her with one finger. Sol did not move.

"She's going to be upset," Ash said. "When she wakes up and we're not there."

"I know," I said quietly. "I had wanted to reason my absence with her while she was awake. But there is no time."

"Solara is..." Ash paused, and poked her too. Sol slept on. "Reason might bounce right off of her if she was awake." Then she looked at me. "The Beast Hall, then?" Ash said, already rising.

I nodded and lifted Sol back to her place between my horns. There was no need to carry her there myself rather than in my hands. Her balance was better between the horns, that was all. The warmth of her was incidental.

Our trip to the Beast Halls was without incident, save for one problem. The Beast Hall's doors were closed.

We stood before them for some time. They were heavy things, built to hold in creatures with considerable size. They were still just doors. I raised my right hand. "I doubt these doors will survive my Requiem."

Ash looked at me. "I am only joking, Ash." I smirked. Then I lowered the hand and sighed. "This will be a problem," I muttered.

"Let's leave her with Ren or Edda, then," Ash said.

I raised an eyebrow. "She will be displeased." I reached up as I said it and adjusted the sleeping bird between my horns.

"They'll take her to the Beast Hall in the morning," Ash said. "It'll probably take us a few days anyway. She was going to be displeased no matter what."

"Very well," I said. "I will have to give the two of them strict instructions, then."

Ash was already walking. "And besides," she said over her shoulder, "the Archon said Ren would lead us the way. So this isn't a detour at all."

"How optimistic," I said dryly, and followed.

The passage down to the Crest chamber was long and descending. Of course it was descending. Everything of value in this Academy lay at the bottom of a staircase. Perhaps the founders had been the last of the dwarves or related to them, who believed that anything of value should be kept closer to the world's core. Perhaps there was some other reason. I would never know, and so I would be vexed forever.

At the end of the passage stood a door. It was a blazing white, so bright it almost resembled the color of the Cradle. In the light of Ren's lantern it was almost painful to look at.

"You're really going to leave her with us?" Ren asked. She was staring at my cupped hands, where Sol lay sleeping. Ren's hair was a mess, and she had yawned four times since Ash had roused her. Edda stood beside her, having been retrieved from a room nearby. She had not yawned a single time yet. That was a point in her favor.

"I am going to leave her with Edda," I said. "I am not nearly fool enough to leave her with you."

"Like hell I want her," Ren grumbled as she looked away.

"I'll do my best," Edda said slowly, and held out her cupped hands.

I looked at the girl. "You will make sure she is under no distress," I said. "You will take her to the Beast Hall come morning, and you will make sure the Inker takes her food and feeds her no other. It is in the pouch, and it is prepared. And you will acquiesce to every one of her demands."

Edda nodded slowly. Ren sighed. I lowered Sol into Edda's cupped hands. The transfer took longer than it needed to. My hands were being careful.

"What's wrong with her anyway?" Ren asked, peering at the sleeping bird.

"She's just asleep," Ash said. "Had a little too much to eat."

That was a rather colorful way to describe that sequence of events.

Ren shrugged. Then she looked past us, at the door. "The Crest chamber," she muttered. "Can't wait to go in myself someday." She shook her head and squinted at us. "You both got everything you need?"

Ash patted the pack on her shoulder. "Yep."

"Alright, well..." Ren scratched the back of her head. "I think you're just supposed to put your hands on the door. Channel a bit of Essence and it should open." She paused, and looked at the floor. "Don't die in there or whatever."

"Will do," Ash said. Whether or not it convinced Ren was hard to say. Then Ash and I looked at each other and pressed our palms to the door.

Blue lit beneath our hands. Light ran outward from our palms in patterns and lettering, spreading across the whole face of the door until every inch of it was covered in lines.

"Ash," I whispered. "These are runes."

"I know," Ash said, and there was wonder in it.

I could not read them. That was strange, for I had read the runic tongue of my age fluently. Some of the character shapes I knew, but I could not make out the whole of it. Not nearly enough to know what any of it meant.Then the door swung slowly inward, and the light of the runes poured into a room that needed no light at all.

The inside was a featureless white as far as the eye could see. We turned back. "See you when we get out," Ash said to the girls.

Ren raised a fist. Edda inclined her head. Sol slept on in her cupped hands and something in my chest twisted. There were words I might have said to her. She could not hear them, and so I did not say them.

We stepped inside. The door closed behind us without a sound. I reached for the bond one last time. It was there. It had thinned to almost nothing, but it was there.

Something about the inside of this resonance chamber was strange. It was impossible not to notice. Every resonance chamber in this Academy had pressed down upon us with more weight than the world outside. Here, I felt no weight. I could walk around freely, as if the mana inside here was the same as the mana outside. There was only white, out to a horizon, and past it.

I had flown above a place like this mere hours ago. At least that place had a sun.

"Could you read them?" Ash asked. "The runes, I mean. I never knew the runic tongue much."

"No," I said. "I recognized some of the characters, but..."

The sky above us changed, and the entirety of the chamber was covered in blue. Something was forming up above us. I stared. Ash gasped. We both know what this was. A screen. A System screen.

The system screen at the Inking had been cracked and flickering. That screen had faint tendrils of black, crawling all along its surface. This screen was just a steady blue, the way a System's screen should be. The way I remembered a System screen being from a time long past.

There would be weight. I prepared for it. I had felt it at the Inking, and then again when I had been carving my Essence Core. When the weight did finally come, it was…small. Where the broken System outside felt like the corpse of a leviathan that was dying but still twitching, this felt like something young in comparison. Like a piece cut from a cloth.

How long had this thing been here? A thousand years? Longer? For a moment, I almost pitied it. The screen began to write.

[Occupants: 2. Calibrating trial...]

The text crawled clean across the surface.

[ERROR: Occupant signatures predate local index by 984 years.]

[ERROR: Occupant 1 status: DECEASED. Contradiction detected.]

[ERROR: Occupant 2 status: DECEASED. Contradiction detected.]

"Lys," Ash said quietly. Her right hand found my left. I squeezed hers.

[Scanning...]

[Occupant 1 marks: SOVEREIGN (2). Designations: REQUIEM. CRADLE.]

[ERROR: Occupant 1 core structure: UNKNOWN. Cannot classify.]

[Occupant 2 marks: SOVEREIGN (1). CIPHER (1). Designations: SEVER. VEIL.]

[ERROR: Occupant 2 core structure: UNKNOWN. Cannot classify.]

The errors did not slow. The screen shook, just faintly. I was sure the one outside had shook more.

[ERROR: Occupant relation: HERO / DEMON QUEEN. Classification: ADVERSARIAL. Current state: ANOMALOUS.]

Ash's hand tightened around mine.

[WARNING: Trial parameters exceeded. Maximum challenge rating insufficient.]

[Searching archive...]

[Archive integrity: WHOLE.]

[Solution found: restore occupants to last stable configuration.]

"Restore," I said. My voice did not sound like mine. "Ash, I think it means to-"

[Loading Role: THE HERO: FULFILLED.]

[Loading Role: THE DEMON QUEEN: FULFILLED.]

The world around us was starting to shift. The very air was starting to warp. I whirled around, Requiem in hand, ready to burn the door. There was no door.

"Ash!"

"Lys!"

One moment Ash's hand was in mine. The next it was not.