Private A Crown Like Infinity

[Solon Raye]

"Even through all this, Solon Raye. You would help me?"

"I would, Mina..."

His form was fire made flesh and kneeled before her majestic form that seemed limitless. For here there was no sky but the limits of the emotions of all mortals plus trillions. Every word left unsaid that could lift the spirit or cut someone down. Every moment shared beneath a setting sun when you stared into their eyes and let them know the truth that was on your heart. The horrors of war and the beauty of conquests. To be moved by something beautiful and dreadful every second, one lived every experience at once in this realm. They discovered their soul and learned how brightly it could burn and how deep it went.

"Because at the core of all of this heartbreak. All of this pain... We are ready to die for it. We must do what we can for all of the things it is worth living for. Here in this endless flame, Mina... I am telling you that you are. And you're not alone...

 

[Minartha]

Eyes that blazed with the countless colors of the stars above and far beyond looked unto him, who would stand with her through it all. Who held here with her, through it all. No matter how deep the blades had cut. Into their flesh. Into their minds. No matter how their whispers had turned to shouts. Crashed and carved and broke in and against their minds.

"I am not alone," she but whispered. Her voice as soft as the heat of twilight embers.

Nascent, with all the promise that would come, should one but keep the flames fed. Sheltered. Tended. Yet there in the trail of her tone, a terminal quiver. A doubt that promised to swallow all that was and could be, but should she allow its pull to guide her.

"I am not alone," she said again, and held onto the soul before her own. "Solon Raye," she said the soul's name, as her eyes burned with a vibrancy of blues and golds, reds and greens. Every color that seemed so absent from the Ashen Kingdom, and its stark and everburning truth. "You are here with me," she spoke into being, that same strength she felt coursing through her, sure as the sun rose come the Dawn, and the Moons its loving company. "And we will both be free,"

---

Panic took the Sightless far from that cursed chamber, where the holding vats of amnion fluid boiled over and hissed. Dunsteel bands, made to secure them, failed. The brittle metal splintered by the rattle and shake of the glass. All of it came undone in a scream and a crack. Metal machines bent and twist to shreds as glass shattered and viscous amnion shot out across the stone and metal walls. All bubble and hiss and shards of shrapnel.

There, betwixt the swirling mists of steam, and the diamond dust glitter of all the ruin, hung in the air, Mina. Eyes alight with Flame, and her dark curls fanned in waves of heat that washed out from the epicenter of it all. Mina's feet touched the ground, and she stared unto the souls of those Sightless beyond her.

 

[The Hierophant]

In the waking world, the ground shook. Steam curled and hissed between shards of bent metal and jagges glass, shifting through every color, venting shroud through the room in a rage. At the heart of the chaos was a Flame fanned, the girl who was no longer prisoner, and would never be again.

Only one Sightless soul stood against the fire. Moments before the explosion, the Hierophant had urged the others to flee. How quickly that simpering scientist had obeyed, clutching at his worthless baubles as he hobbled away. And so too Arjun, the Archer, always wanting to keep his enemies at a distance.

Alone, the Hierophant stood. Alone, she had come into this world, and she alone had the clarity to exact the Everwatcher's will.

White robes whipped about her emaciated form. When she raised her hands against the heat of the girl, they shook.

Still, she cackled, a crackle without heat. Ice crusted at her feet. The third eyelid slit horizontal across her forehead flung open. Beyond that shutter was a glassless window, a pool of black that drilled straight through. A single, ever-distant star gleamed cold in the ether of that black gaze.

"Run as far as you want. Cut me down. Live your whole life free of us." Scarred ridges upon her cheeks stretched as she grinned. "I have already taken what I needed from you."

The empty eye swallowed and drank, turning the amnion around the Hierophant colorless and still. Steam became mist. It swirled at her feet, and crusted into ice along the hem of her robes.

"From your mold will be cast towers of wax. And for every candle that you snuff out, we will light another. The vessel will be completed."

 

[Solon Raye]

The Kingdom of Ash faded away, ever present and yet a distance memory. Suddenly he remembered his body was weak from battles before. Suddenly he remembered pain and that he was alive. How long had they been in that realm? It felt like an eternity, one he wanted to get away from but his heart longed for again. The world felt cold and yet even as he disappeared into cosmic dust, he could still feel the ​

heat. The feeling of being a part of the whole and knowing that one wasn't alone. Because even with all of the noise, it was sometimes better than the coldness of reality.

A strong mind willed him past those thoughts and the pain in his body. The exhaustion. It wasn't his body that fueled him, but perhaps something more powerful. A promise made on the winds of flame itself. That felt more real than whatever mankind might speak on material air.

"You are here with me. And we will both be free."

His brown eyes had a shine to them, the heat of the Kingdom of Ash had reforged his spirit and even with a weary form one could see the man that lay beneath. One who had seen the heavens burning brightly and that had faced the darkness at the brink of the hereafter. The woman in her ghostly form had frightened him moments ago. What felt like millennia ago... And her cold words were far from enough to chill the metal true fire had forged.

"And what is it you imagine you have taken, demon? he challenged, stepping forward to shield Mina from any harm. He would face the abyss for and eternity and a thousand before anything happened to her again.

"Your master understands not the magic it requires to recreate this child. For your foolishness, I shall curse you with something far worse than cutting you down. You shall live.

"Swim deeper in, beyond the light of the sun still peering through the mirror's glass, and you might find some semblance of truth there in the coldness and the dark. Time itself loses meaning, and shows itself as it is true. A thing born from perception. From ones relationship not to it but the world around them, and the shroud itself, which but moves through every beating heart and sprouting bud. As it does in the water, surging upon the open sea. What is real becomes unreal, what is fiction, becomes more powerful than reality, as it takes shape, and changes reality. Carried there in the darkness behind ones eyes. Woven to be by words carved there in that rock, beneath the Kingdom of Mud." - Bebin, many moons ago​

He closed the distance between them and grabbed on to the sides of her face with hands that burned white hot, shining like two suns pressed against her face. His thumbs moved to force her eye open so that he could see into the blackness and peer at the white star in the expanse.

"You can see me. You can hear me. I am sending your servant back to you. And you shall have her for the rest of your days. She will never die... And she will live to see your end. And the end of all your ambitions as every mold you create burns out in killing light. I swear it. Take your pawn."

Solon releases the Hierophant from his burning grip, smoke rising from his hands before he turns to Mina and places his hand on her shoulder. His voice with her is sweet. He kneels.

"Come, young one... We have a journey ahead of us."

​