The Ruler's Rift

Crowned and in Control

"I can't do that! Are you crazy!?" Lucian snapped.

Celeste frowned. The small, shabby room couldn't house all her lust for control. "I thought you didn't care about her," she growled. "I thought you were endlessly loyal to me."

Lucian groaned, "Ugh, listen - I've got that fox to believe that I care about all this royal family crap but I'm in it for Lucy and no one else. Least of all you." He shook his head. "Besides, I don't have to be loyal to someone to know that messing up a corpse is bad news. Talk about disrespect."

The demon's patience for this defiant shark wore thin. "You're right," she hissed. "I don't respect her."

"Then you do it!"

"If it were that simple I wouldn't waste my time talking to you!" Celeste snapped. "I can't do something so heinous and risk losing Nova's undying loyalty. She'd never understand."

"You're a fucking snake..."

Anger welled up and joined with Celeste's desperate thoughts. She had no time for this. Rapid emotions fed the demon's magic and it vied to escape her soul. Pressure built upon her horns and eyes, so she turned away and surveyed the walls to ground herself. They bore numerous twists and splinters like every other room of Nova's subterranean hideaway. At last, Celeste had enough grip on her magic and emotions to hiss, "You can think of me however you'd like, but I need this favor and-"

"And?" Lucian interrupted. "It's not my problem."

Celeste's eyes narrowed. "You really like flaunting that free will of yours, don't you? Saying whatever you want to me..." She smelled the traitorous blood in his veins and that rich, toxic scent fueled all her desires to dispose of him and control him. His sister wasn't here to save him now.

Lucian said something but Celeste didn't listen. Their eyes remained locked as hers leaked burning, cosmic energy. "I wanted to let you do this by your own free will..." she rasped, magic smoking out of her eyes then crackling up her horns. "I see we'll have to use mine."

No one bore witness to the spell. No one heard a thing. The small, creaky room rested far deeper than the rest of the underground. When Celeste cast her wicked sorcery, taking his mind for her own, she left to complete the final preparations. A long, exhaustive day left teleporting a strenuous task especially when the destination stood upon a distant planet.

Xavierras was not a single bit as glorious as Celeste had heard. What once called itself the largest, most diverse planet in the universe presented no more than dead trees and deader soil. Craters littered its surface and bone fragments flecked the dirt like glass on a beach. Yet deep within a forest of charred, stringy trees rested an obsidian shrine. Violet had murdered this planet to the core save for this one shrine; or it had been constructed afterward. Celeste didn't care.

In the clearing where it stood, tall and lonely, Celeste approached and gazed upon its tower-like stature and at the huge sculptures of wings which burst from its side and arched overhead. Perhaps she'd even behold the sight if it were in anyone else's image.

Power awaited and the demon's stomach growled for it, so she set up the altar as instructed. Nova told the story of how Violet had it designated to be her heir's place of coronation. Celeste was to hang up the brooch and offer some of her own royal blood into the hatch at the top of the tower's pedestal - only teleportation could make up for the lack of stairs. No magicless bores would tamper with the structure.

Celeste fixed her mother's brooch upon a chain then stepped back to look over the looming, obsidian wings. Despite the loose, black soil under her boots, the night air lacked dust and flowed through the demon's lungs with clarity. A clear, moonlit sky gazed down upon the soon-to-be queen. Celeste turned to the only stump in the clearing. The jar was there, right where she'd left it.