COF 6: The Last Oracle

BONUS: The Sovereign, The Heiress, and the Spy

2412, Crescin 19, Velpa

The Sovereign pursed her lips, staring at the parchment lying before her on her desk. It was a curious thing, just a yellowed out surface with nothing but a meager collection of koset characters signifying the start of a letter.

She had been like this for over an hour now and couldn't find the right drive to start the correspondence she had to send to the Helinfirth Division. It took too long convincing the noble families to lend a part of their land to help her take out the Penleth fortress before those heathens could complete it and her own people took it as a sign to start giving up.

Well, the Sovereign would not stop just because a few noble airheads who knew nothing about war refused. She would not give up especially if Helinfirth would spell Synketros's advantage in this coming war against Penleth and Cardovia.

The Sovereign exhaled through her mouth and rested her forehead against twined fingers. Her elbows dug against the brittle wood of her desk. Outside the window of her tower, the night sky shone in its varying patterns of stars and moons. It wasn't that long ago when she looked through that window and saw the fulfillment of a prophecy thousands of years old.

Now, that prophecy would be close to fulfilling its last lines.

A small smile spread across the Sovereign's painted lips. Ah, Xanthiene was bound to make a mistake that would spell doom to her and her allies. What could that be? Should the Sovereign push the Virtakios into making one? It's always interesting, trying to see where the Sovereign could play fate and toy with people's perceptions of their future until they yield to what she wanted.

She narrowed her eyes at her pending letter. That's another plan for another day.

The Sovereign clicked her teeth together, her mind already buzzing with potential opening lines that didn't sound too antagonistic but would spell out her demands and the consequence of not yielding clearly. To do that...

"It's funny how I always find you here," a voice the Sovereign knew all too well speared through her ears. She whirled from her seat to find a woman with bland brown hair and sparkling blue eyes stepping out of a portal bent out of shadows and into her tower. "It's even more amusing that you still haven't changed its location even though you know I have access to it."

The Sovereign leaned back against her chair and put her fingers together. She didn't bother turning around while the Heiress' boots tapped against the tower's scrubbed stone floor. "What good would changing be?" the Sovereign said as her one and only rival came in front of the desk with a smile on her face. "You will always find me."

The Heiress' eyes twinkled but they stayed blue. "I'm glad you haven't lost your touch."

"Why are you here?" the Sovereign leveled her gaze on the Heiress. "You know I could have killed you as you entered, right?"

"You know I could have done the same to you, right?" the Heiress chuckled, running a finger against the desk's splintering wood. The sheafs of paper stacked atop the desk swayed not with a stray breeze but from the weight of her unleashed magic oozing from her skin.

The Sovereign didn't reply. The letter had to be composed as soon as possible and this...meandering fool went on her way. SIlence coated them in every ways possible until the Heiress sucked a breath in.

"I came here with a proposition," the Heiress propped herself up the Sovereign's desk to which the Sovereign raised an eyebrow to. If the Heiress noticed it, she didn't show it. "I have been monitoring progress both of Penleth and Synketros and with the rate things are going, we all would either run out of resources or have the Virtakios die on us with her foolish quest to retrieve the thrones."