FOR ALL OF US
ELYRIA
Her skin waslike the sky.
She couldn’t possibly have been a physical, tangible being. Not with the way the expanse of endless night swirled where her skin should be, constellations twinkling across the bridge of her nose, nebulas swirling in her eyes. But Elyria remembered the firm grasp from below those billowing robes when the Arbiter—whenAurelia—grabbed her in Castle Lumin.
She was real.
And she was here.
Her hair—if you could call it that—rippled as the celestial inclined her head at the champions. A greeting, an acknowledgment. Waves of color—violet, green, pink, cerulean—flowed from the crownof her head in an ethereal mass, each strand shimmering as though spun from light itself.
Aurelia’s eyes glinted, the white glow of dying stars bursting at the center of each iris as they drifted from champion to champion. They lingered on each of them for just a moment before finally settling on Elyria, whose breath caught in her throat under that heavy, nebulous gaze.
“I sense surprise,” she said, her layered voice dulcet, more harmonious than it sounded before. It was a jarring experience, Elyria decided, to see those lips move in sync with the kaleidoscopic voice she had come to expect to hear only in her head. “I sense apprehension. Fear. Guilt. Grief.”
“Are you surprised about that? After everything you’ve put us through?” Elyria blurted out.
Thraigg, Zephyr, and Cedric released a collective gasp. It was then that Elyria realized the three of them had planted one knee on the ground, their heads bowed in veneration before the banished star god.
Nox, on the other hand, had their feet propped up on the table in front of them, thoroughly unbothered by the primordial being in their midst. Rather, they surveyed the scene with that same air of amusement they typically bore, like they had a ringside seat at a rather entertaining show.
Figuring she was already knee-deep in smiting territory, Elyria continued. “And you ‘sense’ it? Shouldn’t you, you know,know? You are a celestial.” She couldn’t help the note of betrayal that played in between her words. She felt as though she’d been duped. Used. Like her choice to enter the Crucible was never a choice at all, not with this all-powerful being pulling the strings.
Aurelia smiled wanly, something like sadness sitting at the corners of her starlit lips. “I am. Or...I was. I am diminished. So long as my powers and presence remain tied to this place.”
The darkened tone at the end of her sentence made it clear that was as much of an answer as Elyria was going to get, and she couldn’t blame her for it. She supposed her questions were rather rude. Bordering on blasphemous. But after three trials and a week that felt nearly as long as the twenty-five years that preceded it, she had met her quota for caring.
“What are we to do now, then?” she asked.
The celestial smiled at Cedric, Zephyr, and Thraigg, still genuflected before her. “Please rise.”
Thraigg’s hammer clinked against the floor as he stood, his good arm wrapped around the handle, leaning into it, letting it take his weight like a crutch. Elyria found herself wishing she still had her staff so she could do the same.
She looked at Aurelia with an expectancy that a more devout person might have considered downright sinful. “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Now you take on the Trial of Concord.” Aurelia swiveled on the spot, her robes billowing in a wide arc. She gestured toward the row of doors behind her. The center one began glowing with an all-too-familiar silvery light. “You finish this.”
Thraigg and Zephyr exchanged a nervous glance, the latter’s eyes darting to Kit’s fevered form, still unconscious. The reminder caused Elyria’s insides to ice over.
“Now? What about her?” She pointed at Kit, then to the three other injured champions. “What about all of them?”
Zephyr’s face paled. Thraigg shifted, as if trying to hide the sling holstering his injured arm from view. And despite an attitude that might have suggested otherwise, Nox’s bandage was weeping, and a sheen of sweat clung to their indigo skin.
“They are in no shape to tackle another trial yet. Our magic is spent, and they need toheal. What happened to all that grace given during the earlier trials to rest, to recover, to recuperate?” Elyria glanced in Cedric’s direction, halfway expecting to see he’d succumbed to some unseen injury himself. But despite the literal hell his body had gone through over the past few days, he was the only one other than Elyria who seemed unimpaired.
“I am sorry for the losses you have suffered and the wounds you have sustained, but I fear there is little time left. What happened...” A stricken look overtook her cosmic features. “It is evident there are forces at work here we did not anticipate.”
Cedric cleared his throat. “With all due respect, are we to understand that you did not know Varyth Malchior escaped the last Crucible? That he left someone behind”—his eyes flitted to Elyria—“to manipulate events, to enact his own designs? How can that be?”
The celestial was silent for several long moments. When she spoke again, her multifaceted voice was low. “Even before my banishment, in the height of my prime, I was never omniscient. Neither I nor my sisters and brother can know precisely what mortals feel, what you think, what you’ve done or what you’ll do, at any given time. We might watch the occasional person more closely, track figures of particular interest, plant seeds of foresight or prophecy. But our role has always been simply to provide the means for?—”
“Then what’s the point of you?” Elyria said, and Zephyr gasped again. Elyria ignored her. “How can you have the power to do all this”—she gestured broadly in the air—“yet be caught unaware when dark magic infiltrates the very game you created?”
Aurelia had the decency to look chagrined. “Make no mistake, this is no game. When the crown was shattered, I knew the mistake I made was very grave indeed. Not that I regret my desire to restore balance, but I do regret the manner in which I chose to do so. The power I granted.”
“Because of Malakar?” Cedric asked.
