CHAPTER 63
Azra'il - POV
The half-transformed figure stopped, suspended between man and creature, while I let the silence stretch a second longer than any audience would normally tolerate before starting again.
🎵 "Pasiphae welcomed Asteria with a confident grin,
sure that this queen, like the rest, she would win.
But Asteria drew no sword, and did not retreat,
she offered instead a challenge far more discreet." 🎵
The small silhouettes of Asteria and Pasiphae glided across the floor until they stood face to face. Neither of them held any weapon.
"A game," I sang, shifting my voice into a more narrative tone, stripped of any theatrical lyricism. "Win, and my companions get their human forms back. Lose, and I'll take up the post of your servant until the end of my days, surrendering my will to your control."
🎵 "Pasiphae laughed, amused by such audacity,
certain no mortal had bested her game before.
She took the challenge on with gleeful surety,
not knowing the queen had already counted what was in store." 🎵
I gestured with my left hand. A small earthen board rose between the two figures, with round pieces that began moving on their own across the clay surface, simulating a tactical duel the audience didn't need to understand in detail, only recognise as a game of strategy.
🎵 "Piece by piece, Asteria studied every pattern,
reading intentions before the move was ever made.
Pasiphae, used to winning by charm and not by reason,
this time did not know what it meant to be outplayed." 🎵
The clash on the board resolved itself in a few quick verses. The goddess's last piece toppled off the edge of the table, dissolving into fine dust under the attentive eyes of the nobles.
🎵 "'You have won,' Pasiphae admitted, without joy in her voice,
the first mortal ever to beat me on my own ground.
And she kept to her word, giving back to the men
their lost shape, their name, their body, their will." 🎵
The clay of the pigs reorganised itself at once, and the human forms returned one by one, while Pasiphae's figure withdrew into the set's shadows, accepting her defeat with the typical displeasure of someone whose power rested on guaranteed advantages.
🎵 "No mortal before you dared to challenge me
with mind alone, not sword or shield.
So this I grant: to continue your journey,
go to the dead, hear what death has revealed." 🎵
The island collapsed onto the hall's floor, and the ship resumed its course over the current of water suspended in the air. The water's flow grew noticeably darker, taking on an almost black tone.
At that exact point in the transition between cantos, I decided to alter the room's lighting. I used small pulses of mana to suppress the flames of the torches arranged along the Boreas hall's walls. The fire retreated, plunging the audience into an unexpected dimness that changed the room's temperature and gave the space an almost sepulchral quality.
"To return home, Asteria needed to cross the realm of forgotten souls," I announced, letting the lute dictate the new cadence.
Pale, indistinct outlines of pure mana began sprouting around the suspended water. They flickered in the air like smoke trying to reclaim the physical shape of what they had once been.
🎵 "Erebus, land without warmth or light,
where souls wait on, with no name, no end.
There Asteria heard from a blind seer
the fate that still awaited around the bend." 🎵
The densest spectre of that set raised one hand towards Asteria.
🎵 "You will come home, but the cost will be steep:
you'll lose your companions, you'll lose your ship.
You'll arrive alone, unrecognisable, changed,
yet even so, it won't be an empty trip." 🎵
I let the last line hang in the air with no lute accompaniment, keeping the musicians in absolute silence.
I glanced at the audience. Not a single minor lord dared whisper or gesture with a fan. The whole hall seemed to have forgotten the very existence of Asura's political gossip. Everyone was captured by the fate of the clay queen.
I picked the chords back up, speeding the rhythm with the violinist's help.
🎵 "Leaving the dead, they sailed back out to sea,
but the song ahead proved crueler yet to be:
voices that promised the whole world's wisdom in kind,
if only the men would follow, heart and mind." 🎵
I applied a small magical echo trick through my flow channels, making my own voice overlap in dissonant layers across the hall, simulating the sirens' song in a way meant to sound beautiful and unsettling at once.
🎵 "Bound to the mast by her own free will,
Asteria heard the song, and did not stray.
The others, with wax sealed deep in their ears, rowed on,
and the island was left behind, defeated, far away." 🎵
I cut the reverberation abruptly, changing the set without granting the audience time to catch their breath.
🎵 "Between two perils the ship was forced to sail:
on one side, six heads that devoured without care,
on the other, a whirlpool that swallowed all whole.
They chose the lesser evil, yet still lost one soul there." 🎵
I made several of the small clay figures fall from the suspended water current, dissolving back into ordinary earth before touching the hall's floor. I noticed Eris kept her shoulders tense and her body leant forward, her usual glint of amusement replaced by the face of someone who'd understood the real cost of that journey.
🎵 "Few still remained when the isle of cattle came into view,
a sacred herd that no man was allowed to touch.
But hunger overruled the oath that they once swore,
and the furious sky unleashed the storm as such." 🎵
The earthen ship broke in two over the suspended river. Fragments of clay fell onto the floor and dissolved into ash. The chaotic scene of storm and loss ceased at once, giving way to a small, silent island, bathed in a subtle silver light I controlled with minimal effort.
"On an island forgotten by the maps," I sang, my voice dropping to something almost intimate, "there lived a solitary goddess named Selene, who offered Asteria everything any mortal would think impossible to refuse."
🎵 "'Stay here with me,' said the goddess of the moon,
'and you'll never again have to grow old.
I offer eternal youth, power beyond measure,
a kingdom all your own, a throne of gold.'" 🎵
Selene's silhouette appeared before the broken ship, wrapped in a cold blue luminescence.
🎵 "Asteria looked upon the offer with weary eyes,
weighing every word as one who weighs pure gold.
Eternal life, youth everlasting, a kingdom entire,
everything, except the one thing her heart still longed to hold." 🎵
I let the silence settle before delivering the queen's answer, dropping my voice until it became an almost inaudible murmur.
🎵 "There is someone waiting for me." 🎵
When I sang that line, beneath the mask, I found Eris's eyes.
She held her breath for a fraction of a second, and gripped the fabric of her red dress tightly. There was an admiration in that last line, something she wasn't used to hearing. I didn't need to look at the rest of the audience; I knew, from the quality of the silence that followed, exactly how many people there had stopped breathing for a full second.
🎵 "And Selene, goddess who'd watched a thousand mortals choose
power over love, eternity over a home to keep,
recognised there something too rare to refuse letting go:
she let Asteria leave, with no more bargains to reap." 🎵
Selene's island set dissolved into the air. Grey clay moulds rose in the centre of the hall, forming Thalassia's palace, populated by dozens of small male earthen figures arranged in arrogant postures around an empty throne.
"Twenty years passed, and Asteria finally returned home," I announced, drily. "But she found her own palace overrun by men who considered her dead, all vying for Calliope's hand."
🎵 "Disguised as a traveller, weary and old,
no one recognised her as she passed through the gate.
Calliope, faithful through two decades entire,
still turned away every suitor, every new estate." 🎵
I lowered the lute slowly. I handed the instrument to the violinist, who received it with a silent bow. The musicians kept up the background accompaniment, keeping the suspense alive.
"Calliope announced one final challenge," I sang, keeping only the strength of my own voice in the room. "She would grant her hand only to whoever proved able to string the war bow Asteria had left behind."
I gestured with my left hand. Twelve clay hoops rose in a straight line across the hall, floating suspended a few hand-spans off the ground, with an earthen target placed at the far end.
🎵 "One by one, the suitors tried the bow,
and one by one, the bow refused to bend.
It was no ordinary warrior's bow,
it was a weapon of war, made to serve one who could win in the end." 🎵
The disguised figure of Asteria rose before the set.
🎵 "A traveller asked leave to make her attempt,
and the whole hall laughed at such boundless nerve.
A thin woman, worn robes, without a name,
no one imagined what that gesture would serve." 🎵
I let the music fade to almost nothing, just a thread of violin string holding the moment in the hall.
🎵 "The bow, touched by hands that had known it long before,
seemed, for an instant, to recognise its own true hand.
Twenty years of absence had not erased the memory:
the wood remembered, even when the men could not understand." 🎵
I stepped over to the decorative panel and retrieved the real wooden bow I'd hidden there at the start of the evening. I returned to the centre of the floor, bow in hand, fitting the real, blunt-tipped arrow against the fibre string.
Ghislaine leant forward at once. She was no longer watching a trick; she recognised the perfect mechanical posture with which I held the weapon, a physical alignment no illusionist could ever fake.
I nocked the arrow. I drew the string with precision, feeling the resistance of the bow's wood. I used no mana to correct the trajectory; that would have been an insult to my own centuries of muscle memory.
I loosed it.
The string's snap cut through the silence. The wooden arrow flew in a perfectly straight vector, passing through the first clay hoop, the second, the third. Each ring disintegrated into fine dust in the vacuum of its passage. The projectile crossed all twelve hoops and struck the target at the far end with a dry, final impact.
A heavy silence took hold of the Boreas hall.
The suitors' clay figures fell to the ground simultaneously, crumbling into dust.
🎵 "Calliope walked toward the stooped traveller there,
her eyes already knowing what her heart had known for years.
And Asteria, at last, lowered the victorious bow,
ready to stop being legend, and simply be herself, free of all fears." 🎵
I let the song's final line echo alone through the hall's walls, with no instrument accompanying it.
🎵 "After twenty years, she finally came home." 🎵
I lowered the bow.
I allowed myself to savour the silence that followed. I had genuinely lived through every loss and every storm in that song, in ancient incarnations this world would never be capable of recording. And, for the first time in centuries, I'd managed to translate that memory into something other people could share.
Sauros broke the stillness, standing up abruptly from his chair, the wood scraping against the floor. "THAT WAS NO MERE PERFORMANCE!" he exclaimed, his booming voice echoing with rare seriousness. "THAT WAS AN ACT OF ARTISTIC WARFARE!"
Philip stood up right after, eyes narrowed as he assessed his political guests' astonished expressions. He was already calculating the value of that silence I'd created in the hall.
Hilda dried the tears from her eyes with a silk handkerchief, making no effort at all to hide her emotion.
Rudeus leapt to his feet, clapping with an enthusiasm that had entirely forgotten any noble hall etiquette. "That was incredible!" was all he managed to say amid that whole crowd, his voice a little hoarse, his eyes still fixed on me with that mix of pride and technical astonishment I knew, from experience, would turn into an entire list of questions the moment we were alone.
Eris remained standing beside him, her face wet with tears she didn't even seem to have noticed. Her hands still gripped the fabric of her red dress, her knuckles white, as if she needed to hold onto something physical not to fall apart again at the song's ending.
When our eyes met amid the ovation, she offered me a rare, strangely shy smile, one that contrasted entirely with her usual explosive temperament. Her cheeks took on a shade of red that definitely didn't come from the candles' heat, and she looked away too quickly for it to be coincidence, feigning sudden interest in her own hands.
Ghislaine, meanwhile, was the last to react, but did so with the solemnity of a true warrior. She stood firm at the edge of the hall and pressed her closed fist against her chest, the traditional mercenary salute reserved exclusively for those who'd demonstrated genuine mastery in combat.
I couldn't tell whether the gesture was directed at Asteria or at me. I chose not to try to settle the question.
The Asuran nobles' applause exploded right after like a released wave, filling the stone hall with a loud intensity.
I kept the bow close to my body and brought my free hand to my chest, over my heart, and bowed, not the measured, protocol bow any hired artist would offer out of politeness, but something slower, deeper, the kind of bow that only makes sense when the person bowing is, in fact, giving thanks for something that genuinely matters.
I straightened up again, looked one last time at that entire hall standing, applauding a story none of them knew was real, and let a small smile slip beneath the mask, invisible to any of those guests, but there all the same.
Twenty years, sung in a single night.
A memory, finally, shared.