33. Chapter 33
We slept under the stars that final night before we made it to Rida.
Spring fully dominated winter here, the sting of the air softening to a cool breeze as I lay with my head on Malik's chest, letting the powerful thump of his heart keep my anxieties about the next day at bay.
I couldn't help but wonder what would happen at Rida now that I knew Malik's truth. Would Myaella expect him to fight for her, or would he go against the gods and fight by my side?
It felt odd, surrendering myself to the unknown like this.
I was always prepared for the worst, scouting out every detail I could to prevent against, but I knew there was no preparation to be done for whatever awaited us at Rida.
I would have to face it head-on, in real time, trusting my own intuition and connection with Yllsora to protect me.
Watching Malik, I noticed how his face softened as his eyes closed.
He seemed oddly at ease despite the fate we were barreling towards, like there wasn't a great possibility we would die beneath Rida—whether at the hands of the mainland men, the Dures' army, or Therian.
Whoever got to us first. But I found I too felt calm with the unknown ahead of me, every part of me at peace with how right this was.
Malik opened his eyes to find me still staring at him, a small smile gracing his face.
"What?" I asked.
"I like that you're looking at me," he answered. "Means that this all isn't just a dream."
Malik kissed me then, deep and tender, and a part of me mourned all the time we had lost together. It could have always been like this, so easy and right.
I was grateful for these last few weeks together, getting to know one another in this new version of ourselves.
And though fear gripped me upon his return, it proved unfounded.
He accepted every part of me, and for that I was grateful.
I didn’t have to fit in a role or title for him.
And he didn’t have to fit into one for me.
Even if these were my last moments with him, I would take them and thank the Divine for allowing me this.
The breeze picked up in that moment, stark and cold like it was in Sorrel, when I heard the voice I now knew as Myaella.
Her voice had sparked so much fear in me before, but now, I sat up, ready to face her head-on, preparing myself to hear her voice, to question her for all that she had done after what I had learned about the Shroud and Malik.
But when she appeared on the wind before me, the eir floating around her in a way I had never seen the creatures act before, and I found myself frozen.
Her opalescent hair glittered in the moonlight, her eyes as light blue as a spring day's sky. She was not the fearsome Divine I thought she would be, but instead a Divine that seemed to exist with an undeniable air of peace around her.
Malik stiffened beside me as I took her in, somehow recognizing her in an instant. I shuffled closer to him, offering myself as a shield.
"Myaella," I said, the name whisking out of me.
"It is about time we meet," she said, as if she was not the source of all of my suffering, the maker of the Shroud that took both Malik and the peace of being a Mother Blessed from me, the maker of all the pain and suffering that plagued all of those who walk Yllsora's lands.
"Why are you here?" I asked, wanting nothing more than to see her gone, to see the rot she sent to Yllsora vanish alongside her.
She smiled calmly, as if she had been expecting my anger. "This world needs help, seeing as it has found itself deprived of a Divine, as yours has abandoned you for a decade now. I am here in her stead."
Her words cut through me like a knife, speaking what I had not wanted to admit to myself, words that I was still willing to fight against in hope that she was wrong.
While I had wondered if the Mother had indeed abandoned us, I did not want to believe it.
I needed to believe that the Mother was absent because it was what was best for Yllsora, just as she had told me that day in Malik's camp.
I needed to believe that she would come back, and that the last ten years had just been a snag in Yllsora's history.
"The Mother has done what was needed to save this world," I said. "She is trying to protect this place she calls home. And all you've done is try to destroy it."
Myaella laughed. "And that is where you have it all wrong."
Long-suffocated anger rose within me at her words, at the gall she had to assume that I did not know what was happening in my own world, one to which I had dedicated my life.
"You and your rot and your revelers you have placed here are killing Yllsora," I told her. "I've seen it spreading for years now, slowly killing what was once a place of beauty, of endless life. I do not think I have it wrong."
"There is so little you actually know, Allyra. I am saying that it is the Mother—Mirelda, we call her in the Caelium—who is destroying Yllsora, when she is the one who should take care of it. But she has only shifted the burden onto you and the other Mother Blessed."
"It is not a burden, but our whole reason for existing," I fought back.
"It should not be," she said. "It is the duty of the Divine to safeguard their worlds. She has abandoned hers."
Myaella's words struck somewhere deep within me, somewhere that longed for a reprieve of everything that had been laid on my shoulders.
But even with them so plainly laid out, I could not make sense of what she was saying or why a Divine would bother with such matters of a world that wasn't their own.
"And why do you care? You are Divine, we are just a blip in your life. We will be long gone before your life is even half over."
"This is true," Myaella said. "But Mirelda is my sister. My twin. I know her ways, and I know what she will end up doing to this world and countless others she will no doubt try to create in her life. It is best I stop her now, before it goes too far."
"I don't believe you," I said, my voice shaking. "She gave the Mother Blessed the power we have to thrive, and it has helped us survive everything that you caused."
"She did. All Divine have their moments, I will admit. But more often than not, they act out of their own self-interest. I want your kind to last longer than a few centuries. And for that, there needs to be a balance."
A balance. Something I could not wrap my mind around the meaning of.
"Why? What is this balance you keep speaking of?" I asked. "We have always followed the Mother and her wishes. That should be all Yllsora needs in order to thrive. She wanted to protect this place she created and calls home. I think we will survive just fine without this balance you speak of."
Myaella laughed. "Her home? Do you really think this is the first place she has tried to call home?"
She walked around the field, everything bending to her will, a show of power I never knew was possible.
"Let me tell you something, Allyra. What you know about her is a lie.
She has spun a story of being a peace-bringer, of bringing prosperity to not just the Divine but all of the worlds within our system.
But I will tell you the truth. You know of the Caelium in one light, but I know it in another.
The way it exists now is not how it always was.
It is now only an idea of what it once was.
Before, it was much more, a place thriving with creation and light and all things that make all worlds possible.
But it is not that anymore and you have not known a world that coexists with the Caelium the way it should.
Because Mirelda took that from you, from all of us. "
I shook my head. "That is not what she told me."
"I'm sure it is not. She has always been one to spin tales in a way that benefits her best."
I shook my head. "She is not that way anymore. She has always guided us to care for Yllsora for our benefit."
"And you have, but you have also taken from it and have given nothing in return."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The Mother Blessed are so focused on life that they forget there is a cycle to it.
Your power can only exist if something fuels it.
And nothing did until the Black Shroud. The roots are hungry and they must be fed.
I have provided them with that when the Mother Blessed failed to take the opportunity to do it themselves. "
I could feel the tension in my body rising at her words, the dread of what she was saying sinking in.
I looked down at my feet, my eyes darting back and forth as I recalled memories of my work as a Mother Blessed, searching them for signs that all my work against the rot was for nothing, that I had potentially hurt Yllsora even more by trying to destroy it.
I thought of all the crops I had yanked from the soil when their limbs went placid, how I had forced them to regrow when they had not wanted to ripen.
I thought of how we healed the nimids when they were limp in the winter, not letting them sink into the ground as they so often tried to do.
"So, I can't destroy the rot? You're saying it must stay? Or what? What will happen?"
"Or the roots will continue to hurt the Mother Blessed. You cannot continue to take from an empty hand."
I was silent as I took in her words and their meaning.
It made sense. We had taken and taken from Yllsora, pulling power from her because we thought it was never-ending, that it was fueled by some Divine well of power that we could always count on.
I should have known that was not the truth the night of the Shroud, should have known when everything beneath me started to crumble, but too much had transpired for me to realize it.
"But why have we had to suffer for so long?"
"Because you have taken from Yllsora for nearly a hundred years and she needed all this time of death and decay to regenerate, to build anew for the future that lies ahead."
It gave me hope knowing that maybe this long winter hadn't been for nothing, that our suffering had been for the good of Yllsora, that maybe, once Rida was saved and this was all over, that the earth would go back to the version of it that I had longed for.
"Go to Rida," Myaella continued. "And you will find that it is not as Mirelda says.
She has been leading you on a quest she has been too afraid to take herself.
There is something there that she is too afraid to face, and she does not want to admit to.
Something that must be dealt with, a way of Yllsora that must be changed, or you all will continue to suffer for the rest of its existence. "
An ache had begun to form in the center of my forehead as I worked to wrap my mind around everything she was saying. "I don't understand."
Myaella stopped before me, her mere presence making me shiver with the power that surrounded her.
"The Mother may be what you called the Divine that created this world, but what you really should be worshipping is the earth beneath your feet, the grass that grows in fields, and the crops that feed you.
That is what needs your devotion," she said.
"And it all comes to a head with Rida. My sister did not create Rida of her own volition.
Rida just was. It was something she didn't plan for, and once she realized she had created something that would garner more praise and attention than her, that is when she created the Mother Blessed.
That is your purpose. So that she would not be forgotten.
The Mother Blessed were created as acolytes of the Divine, which is needed, yes, but what is needed more, are stewards of Yllsora. "
I couldn't shake the truth I heard in Myaella's words, couldn't deny the joy I felt in the roots at her words.
They were celebrating, exulting in the fact that, finally, someone was saying what they had been screaming all these years.
And then there was me, coming to understand that the Mother Blessed had had it all wrong, realizing that we had been led by a Divine who wanted nothing more than praise.
She did not create Yllsora out of wanting to foster life, but to foster worship and control, to be a god.
"What will happen if we abandon her?" I asked. "If we stop working for her, and instead work for Yllsora?"
"She has already abandoned you," Myaella said. "Yet here you still stand. But I cannot say you will stand here for much longer if you do not pay attention to the very land you walk on and everything it has been trying to tell you. I know you can hear it, Allyra, but have you been listening?"
I looked down at the ground beneath me, taking care to be gentle, closing my eyes, and feeling down into the roots like I had so many times before.
The roots were not fearful, not biting, as they had been ever since the Shroud, but were now open, willing themselves to the surface to be close to me.
It was almost as if they could feel that instead of being in search of something specific, I was there to feel them, letting them tell me their story.
I felt that they held the same hope I did: that maybe one day they would not have to worry about being drained of their power, that both the roots and the Mother Blessed could exist beside one another once again, without fear, the both us communicating what we needed from one another and working in tandem towards it.
I felt their hope that we would take care of them, and that together, we could build Yllsora back to the land it once was and how desperately they wanted that.
I released a shuddering breath and opened my eyes to find Myaella studying me, recognition that I had heeded her word on her face.
"Continue to Rida, the both of you," Myaella looked at me, and then Malik. "You are both needed for what is next."
And then, she disappeared as quickly as she had appeared, nothing but the rustle of leaves evidence that she had been there.
I continued to kneel on the dew-dampened ground as the wind continued to blow after she left, my body heavy with all she said, pressing my hands to the soil, thinking of what she had told me—that the Mother Blessed had it all wrong, that we had pushed too far, and that I, someone who had been granted the ability to listen to Yllsora, had not done just that.
I felt shame for not seeing it sooner, for not realizing what was truly going on with the world, but I had hope that whatever we faced at Rida would redeem me, and that I could begin anew.
I dug my hand into the soil, vowing myself to never again ignore the roots, letting them be the guide instead of me, and when my hand made contact with the earth, the roots sprang up, and wrapped around my hand, but this time it was a caress, a welcoming, a coming home.