“Uh… Adelaide? Did something happen?” Qingning’s voice trembled like a sparrow under the eaves, drawn by that half-scream like a string snapping in the dark.
She rushed over, her steps scattering like spilled beads across stone.
“Could it be… the Carne Family stirring trouble again—” Her memory flashed red, the door smeared like blood, and panic crawled like a nest of ants.
She pushed at the door, but it held like a rooted tree; someone behind seemed to grip it with iron fingers.
“No, it’s fine,” Adelaide answered from behind, voice flat as still water under moonlight. “A filthy big cat crawled past the window and spooked me… heh, sorry.”
“Oh. I overreacted—then good night, Adelaide.” Her words drifted like a paper lantern downriver.
“Sweet dreams,” came back through wood like a small bell behind the veil.
Qingning peered at the half-translucent curtain, moonlight pooling like silver water, and saw only Adelaide’s lone shadow like a reed; eased, she walked away like a breeze leaving.
Inside, Adelaide listened to footsteps recede like a tide pulling back, and she let out a breath like steam fading from tea.
Then she snapped her head around, glare hard as flint, at the figure squeezing from the narrow space behind the wardrobe, stretching like a big cat after dusk.
“Lioness, you—” Her voice was a low growl in tall grass, teeth set like stones.
She swallowed two curses like bitter seeds and dropped her tone like a cloak. “What are you pulling?”
“I should be asking what you’re doing, crying alone,” Varie shot back, eyes bright as embers. “I knocked on the window like rain, and you didn’t move.”
“...!” Heat surged to Adelaide’s cheeks like dawn brushing clouds; she worked her jaw, words slow as syrup. “Under any circumstance, you shouldn’t show up. Do you know how many Elves are watching like owls in the boughs?”
She thought of Mira, meetings cut off like strings for safety, and sourness rose like smoke; Varie only shrugged like a cat flicking its tail.
“Ha? You think those long-eared reporters can spot me? Relax, they’re still dozing like roosting birds,” she said, then her face hardened like a drawn blade. “And I’ve got something we have to discuss now.”
“What is it?” The question hung like a hook in the air.
“I just came back from an old friend, and I brought bad news,” she said, words cold as wind off stone.
Adelaide rolled her eyes inside like a tide turning, but after the tale her gut dropped like a trapdoor; she lifted a hand to her forehead and sat like a string cut.
“So you really ripped the radicals’ posters off the walls like dead leaves, and you shouted in the square they’re idiots?”
Varie shrugged, shoulders loose as rope. “They printed my face like a totem and plastered it everywhere; what, you think I was wrong?”
Adelaide shook her head, hair sliding like ink. “No, you were right. They used you like a banner to rile your kin; now the idol stands up and rejects them, and it douses their fire like a sudden rain, at least short term.”
“Uh… why do you sound like that long-eared?” Varie scratched at her ear, color rising like a faint blush; “I didn’t think that far,” she muttered, words twitching like sparrows.
“Don’t celebrate too soon,” Adelaide’s tone turned like a weather vane. “You didn’t touch the root. The rot is lockdown and curfew; with your people’s proud temper, blood is a flood waiting.”
Varie clicked her tongue like a spark. “Spare me. Bottom line, the Carne Family punks who set the blockade can’t win this election, or the wheel rolls downhill beyond us.”
“You say it lightly,” Adelaide replied, iron in her voice like frost on steel. “Friendly reminder: our contract was only to pry your chieftain out of prison.”
“Ha? Lives are on the line like candles in wind, and that’s your stance?”
“So? I’m human. How many of your two tribes die—what’s that to me?” Her words iced over like winter on a pond.
“You—!” The air snapped like a dry twig.
Grumbling aside, Adelaide sighed like a tired bellows, closed her eyes, and her brows bent like a crescent bow while thoughts circled like crows in gray sky.
She needed the Savia Rose; she had to beat the Carne Family’s candidate like a rival blade. Yet a time bomb ticked inside the Nacha Tribe, the fuse whispering toward powder.
Winning the second trial of Good was hard as a cliff; now a clock sanded away like an hourglass gnawing down.
She rubbed her temples, the vein thrumming like a drum, irritation pricking like thorns; Varie suddenly “ah’d” like a spark popping from coals.
“Right, I also brought the Inventor and the Doomsayer back,” she said, words clicking like dice. “The radicals know I went to their place first; they might go sniff trouble like wolves at a door.”
Already irked, Adelaide cut her off like a blade. “So what? How does that matter?”
“Okay, okay, powder keg,” Varie rolled her eyes like marbles. “On the road we talked, and I learned they weren’t extreme at the start; the river was clear before something muddied it.”
“At the start? Did something push them over?” The question lifted like wind turning to squall.
“The Carne lockdown edict was the big shove, sure,” Varie said, voice dim as fog. “But they became so extreme even my kin flinched after a drug started circulating, like gray mist seeping under doors.”
Adelaide’s eyes opened like shutters. Varie drew a small vial from her waist pouch, glass catching moonlight like a cold fish; inside lay half a bottle of pale gray liquid like ash-water.
“They handed these to the Inventor and the Doomsayer as a ‘pick-me-up’; they didn’t buy it, so they kept it,” she said, passing it over like a pebble from a stream. “I sniffed it—felt wrong, like a snake coiled under perfume. Check it?”
Adelaide took the vial; at the twist of the cap, a faint scent unfurled like silk—Chaos hidden like a black thread among blended notes.
“This… is tainted by Chaos. Why is it here?” Her frown cut like a knife through paper.
“No idea. The radicals don’t seem to know the source, and officially the Carne Family holds this up like a shield as their reason for the lockdown.”
“Hm…” Adelaide mused, gaze tight as a knot. “Self-orchestrated isn’t impossible, but proof is sand-grains with only this one sample.”
As she summed up, another nerve plucked like a lute string; beyond the Chaos, a second note drifted like a fox slipping through brush.
It felt like she’d smelled it elsewhere; a blur rose like mist, then sank out of reach like a ripple fading in a pond.
It wasn’t familiar, not a blossom whose perfume brands memory like a seal; more like a brush-by that left a ghost in the subconscious.
Some desert spice from recent months? The sand shifted underfoot and said no.
She couldn’t pin it; she capped the bottle, set it aside like a stone from a pocket, and lowered its priority to clear the pile like stacked crates.
“By the way, the letter couldn’t carry this,” Adelaide said, voice steady as a candle. “Since you’re here, I’ll tell you—your chieftain asked me to relay something.”
Varie listened, face taut like a drawn string; impatience frayed like a thread as Adelaide spoke history, and at “Don’t repeat the same mistake,” she cut in like thunder.
“Is the old man going senile? Do I look like a fool who gambles my people’s lives? If we can avoid a fight, we avoid it—I know that like a lion knows her den.”
Her words stalled because Adelaide opened her palm like a quiet dawn.
Nestled there, a silver badge engraved with the goddess Isylia gleamed like a moon resting on skin, just as it had in the prison’s night.
“This is…?”
“Your chieftain handed it to me, but I think he meant for me to pass it to you,” Adelaide said, offering it like a key across a river.
She watched Varie, stunned into silence like a deer in sudden light, and asked, puzzled, “Is it a token to command the tribe like a banner over camp?”
After a long beat, Varie found her voice, thin as a reed. “No.”
Disappointment pricked Adelaide like a needle, but Varie pressed on, words heavy as iron. “No, it’s worth more than any damned token. It’s our most sacred keepsake. It’s the key that opens…”
—the gate of the Magma Forge, where fire sleeps behind stone like a heart in the mountain.
