- What? But we must evacuate the capital and stop the tournament!
Audisélia took his hand and stroked his back to calm him down.
- But what are you doing?
- I'll calm you down.
- But stop!" he blushed, "this is surely not the time for jokes!
The queen shrugged her shoulders and looked ahead.
- Your sentence should not have been that, it should have been "that is surely not the only problem.
- Because there are others?
- Yes, of course there are others! As always! she growled, you have already seen problems arrive alone?
- What other worries are there?
- Well... The Feline, Elena, foreign threats forcing us to move again and that juvenile human downstairs.
- He too? said the astonished guard, pointing at him.
The queen responded with a nod and a strange pout with her mouth.
Sawyer moved around the room scratching his head with one of his hands. Stopping in place, he dismissed everyone, even though he knew their loyalty, he had no desire for this conversation to be overheard by anyone other than himself and the queen.
- Selia, what is their order of importance?
She was pensive for a few moments, as if she was thinking about something that had happened a long time ago. Sawyer wanted to interrupt her reflection, feeling her getting lost in it, but the queen spoke up again.
- "You're not ready."
Sawyer swallowed hard, forgetting to pick up Audiselia on her language. He collapsed on an empty seat, put his elbows on the armrests of the said seat, intertwined his fingers and put his index fingers and thumbs against each other before putting his index fingers on his forehead and his thumbs on his chin, he let the air flow out of his nostrils by the hole created by the positioning of his fingers.
- You could make an effort to be less stressed.
- It's not possible, Selia!" he finally said after a long silence, "how can something worse than the kissing twenty-six years ago be less worse than what's about to happen? After all, we have faced a legendary dragon.
- I put all of these issues down to "You're not ready!" because not only are there too many grey areas for us to establish the magnitude of the threat, but also because we don't know if there is any connection between them and when it will happen, she explained.
- Just Marrynelia is too much! You know what? Let's start with this.
- You are abusing, it seems that if she farted, the city should be evacuated!
- Selia!" shouted Sawyer, "you can't make fun of other people's beliefs when you complain that they make fun of the legend of the Hero and the Fairy.
- It is not even a belief since it is...
Sawyer put his hand over her mouth to shut her up.
- What's wrong with you?" Sawyer vilified her. "No one knows about this! You don't have to talk about it! How many times do I have to remind you?
- You break them to me with your futile taboo, insisted the queen, you realize that if we can talk about his situation, we will never find a solution.
- I know, I know...
- So yes, she woke up but I don't see the need to trigger the "Ze'stia Plan" knowing that its effectiveness is still to be proven and that she just WAS awake. She didn't open her eyes or move, just woke up. This is not the first time this has happened, as long as she is not able to use her magic.
- Awake? What do you mean, awake?
- You said it yourself, it's confidential," she smiled and shrugged.
He winced as he rolled his eyes.
- If it's not that important, why do you care?
- The fact that there are other things that come into play with her waking up.
- Like what?
- Have you ever heard of the Witch's Dawn Legion cult?
- Yes, in whispers, he remembered, heretics who defy the legitimacy of our gods in favor of an omnipotent witch.
- Well, these heretics have been in action since his awakening.
- What do you mean by that?
- That I don't think this is a mere coincidence...
Sawyer scratched his chin and moved around the room to think, grabbed a pitcher of lemonade and poured it into a glass.
- Use me too.
The guard complied and poured her a drink, which she barely drank, then resumed the discussion.
- It is true that in the historical texts she is also called a "witch" but I would have thought that this would be an insult.
Historians in this country are incapable of being neutral.
- It's true..., he admitted, wait... One will still make excavations in the files? he lamented.
- No. We have absolutely no time because of the tournament and other...
Sawyer breathed a sigh of relief.
- But Sélia, normally you can find them and listen to their conversations, your waves extend over the whole kingdom, right?
- Yes, but they look like they have protection, so I can't tell if they are fanatics or terrorists.
- OK, any other information on the subject?
- No, that's all I learned.
- You know, Selia, it's not your job to do this investigation.
- Who do you want to turn him over to? To those incompetents in the supervisory office who are full of sex freaks?
- Well, it's their job, they have to do it.
The queen laughed nervously at this, before showing her obvious disgust with these people.
- Are you kidding me? So I can find stolen photos in their reports again? No, thanks. But to get back to the disturbing things going on around the kingdom, we can talk about the monsters and armed troops beyond the land of Kano.
- Armed troops and monsters?" he said in amazement, "normally our scouts would have warned us before they got to our borders.
- They did it when I sent them to get Elena.
- What?" said the bodyguard of the Goddess of Lightning, "you did it again?
- We'll talk about this later, since it's related to the boy, but these troops are just hanging around, they're not even trying to launch an assault, they haven't even penetrated the border or our defenses would have kicked in, and the biggest problem is that they've been hanging around for weeks.
The queen brought up a map on one of the walls of the lodge and with a pocket laser that she pulled out of her cleavage, she pointed out all the areas where this army had been seen and indeed, they had never entered Kano country.
- What kingdom are they from?" asked Sawyer.
- No idea, she replied, there is no coat of arms on the flag, except for a drawing that is strangely familiar to me.
- Did you send them an emissary? he suggested.
- Already done. He got eaten.
- Eat..., he corrected her, wait, what? How do you know that?
- Of course, he didn't go alone, his companions told me.
- And the relationship with the Feline?
- In the days following her awakening, this mysterious army ordered itself and stood in line, she explained, I must tell you that it is the first time since I reached adulthood that something gives me so many chills, confessed Audisélia, I do not know if it has anything to do with her, but in any case, this coincidence is... unpleasant.
Sawyer put his hand on her head and said:
- I didn't know you were a coward," he whispered to her.
- These people are not normal, they look... evil, I felt it when I looked through the binoculars. If you allowed me to go to war, I would have destroyed them long ago.
- Our army doesn't need you to take care of vulgar and cowardly people who don't have the courage to face us.
- I will not send them against an unknown enemy! she disapproved.
- And I will not let you go to confront you in front of an enemy of which you are afraid, he replied, moreover, you are going to bring us again a troubadour...
The queen stood up, outraged by the words of her guard.
- I won't let you say bad things about Elena!" said Audisélia, "you...
- Speaking of her, what possessed you to send people after her?
- Now that we know the region and that we control it, there were no deaths, this time, she indicated to him.
- I already told you that if the kid was the Nemesis, she would reappear on her own so you didn't need to... Wait? They came back? he said in a daze.
- You're slow on the uptake," she said, "and yes, silly! They all came back, dodging this army of the strange.
She sat back down in her chair and poured herself another glass of lemonade.
- Surprised and amazed.
- No wonder, since they have been trained for, she says furiously, and does not cut me off to say anything.
- Yes, my queen," he said with a slow voice and a mocking tone, "tell me why you insisted on disobeying me despite all my recommendations.
- You know that I am the queen and that it is up to you to obey me, reminded Audisélia.
- But I've been looking after you since I found you so I make sure you don't do anything too big for you.
- Yeah, yeah," she grumbled, "I know that. The truth is, I asked to go looking for her because the human child intrigues me.
- In what way?
- The human dies, revealed Queen Audiselia.
- What do you mean?" asked Sawyer, "Is that an expression?
- No!" she whispered, "I'm talking about the human who saved the wingless fairy princess. Well, apart from the pharaonic amount of lead I helped extract from her body, medical analysis shows that her cells are breaking down abnormally but also uncontrollably and constantly, except in one situation.
- Who is?
- When he sleeps.
Sawyer rubbed his eyes, not understanding what his friend was getting at.
- So now you're telling me that this kid is going to die from a cellular malformation but he can do what we've all witnessed, talk, laugh, without suffering pain?
- I think that he takes enormously on him not to show that he suffers, but yes, he is going to die, she confirmed, and that corroborates the information which my small fairy brought to us on the fact that he sleeps enormously, she added, I think that he is not aware of his alarming health. But there is something that saves him, and it is this thing that intrigues me.
- What is this thing that made you risk the lives of our men to go in search of a woman more elusive than the wind?
- This is because it has the same regenerative capacity as her.
- Seriously?" said a shocked Sawyer, "are you sure about this? It's not possible for anyone else to have it except if it's really...
Audisélia's face faded.
- The Nemesis, he caught himself, he can't...
- You know," interrupted the queen, staring at the ceiling, "when she came to ask for my help for a boy she was taking care of, she told me that this little man was suffering from a similar illness to the one I described to you...
- Uh... Sélia? said the worried guard.
- And you remember that I refused her my help, continued Audisélia without paying attention to her best friend, whereas she begged me on her knees, whereas it is proscribed in her religion to bend the knee in front of another person than her god. She begged me in tears, sinning against her god and her principles for the life of a child whose importance to her I did not know, just because of an old quarrel from a short time ago for us who live hundreds of years, but for her it was from an eternity..., she cried.
- A...A...Att...Wait, Audisélia!" stammered the fairy guardswoman, "there is no proof that...
- Because of my ego as queen of the Fairy Forest kingdom, I... I left my best friend behind when we promised to always be there... for each other..., she pitied herself, clutching his arm.
- No but Sélia, stop there, it doesn't mean anything!
- I swore to kill him!" she wailed.
Lightning bolts began to emerge from her body, the more she burst into tears, the more numerous they became. Until Sawyer heard nothing more, he saw the queen turning towards him and he was taken by a terrible fright when he saw her face.
What he feared had happened.
If he let her out of this room through any exit, whether it was the platform or the entrance, he didn't know what kind of catastrophe she might cause.
Sawyer couldn't stand to see her like this, which is why he hadn't mentioned the possibility to her when they were stating their guesses or she was doing her research, but her friend was far too smart and hard to fool to have not considered or ignored the possibility.
The queen stood up and walked towards the guard.
Her jerky abilities, her makeup that flowed with her tears, her eyes that had reddened, swollen, and sunken into their sockets, her mouth gaping, and her fingers making erratic movements, reminded her of the undead.
He really hated seeing her like this.
The bodyguard got up and took her in his arms, even if it meant being electrified by the lightnings that Audisélia produced, he stroked her head to reassure her and to stop her sobbing.
- It means that because of me... she would have died because of me..., she said, sniffing.
- We don't know anything about it, Sélia," he said, enduring the lightning bolts that hit him, "we can't make such a hasty conclusion without concrete proof. You may be right to send people to look for her, I think...
He didn't want to make false claims that would harm him. If he was wrong, in a fit of madness, she could turn him into a fried butterfly. His only option was to be evasive in what he said.
- You have to sleep now, Sélia, he whispered to her with a soft voice, when you wake up, you'll feel better...
Sawyer sang her a lullaby to calm her down, the flashes became less and less present until she was not able to send any more, her eyelids became heavier and heavier, until she could not open them anymore.
Her last words before being plunged into a deep sleep:
- It's a good thing I have you... otherwise I wouldn't have anyone to love...
Then she fell asleep for good, holding the white scarf around her left wrist.
Continuing to cajole her, he whispered:
- Me too, Selia... I love you too...