A Modern Fairytale

I know, but you look enough like one for a painting.

Ulric was no longer king—and he hadn't been for what felt like a very long time. Ironically, as he hovered just a bit behind Jena Kalyna, ensuring that the clones he made for her were all fighting as they should, he felt more like a king than he ever had the whole time he bore the Venethema crown. What makes one a king? Certainly not the existence of a crown; if that were the case, he wouldn't have felt so hollow for all fifty years that he had worn the Venethema crown. So what, if the entire kingdom was built from his own scope of imagination? So what, if he could move mountains with the wave of a hand? None of those powers gave him any satisfaction. But now, flying high in the sky behind Lady Kalyna, Ulric suddenly understood what he had been missing in all those years—and why that was so.

Before him, she glowed like she was a messenger of the sun, and it was not due to the golden color of her hair. It was an intrinsic glow, something that shone through from the depths of her soul. Something about it felt so familiar; at the same time, it felt so very alien. She charged down toward King Sepher's army, her sword emitting a pure white light so bright it precluded anyone from looking at it for more than a split second. The army followed her movements, and as the battle wore on, the legend of Venethema's immortal soldiers was replicated in the skies: each time one fell, another rose in her place. The king of Navitusia never showed, and Valerie was not seen entering his castle, but when the end came, the signs were plain as day. The clouds of different colors and structures dissipated, the whole scenery that made up Navitusia all but vanished back into an ordinary sky. The elementals, of course, remained—although some were so completely taken by surprise that they fell straight out of the sky. Lady Kalyna stopped her movements, floating back to where Ulric was.

"Navitusia has fallen," she announced in a whisper, her gaze on the elementals for a moment before shifting to him.

The semi-fallen spread his arms along the length of his dark feathered wings. As he did, the copies he had previously made of Jena Kalyna disappeared.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"That depends on..."

She had begun to speak, but Jena did not finish her sentence—there was no need for her to. The reason she trailed off was a visual one: from head to toe, she began to shine. What had been a glimmer akin to the sun was now sacred, and as her eyes remained on Ulric, she smiled a smile so purely made of joy and gentleness that although this was the closest in physical proximity he had been with her for years, he couldn't have felt farther.

Ah, especially when a pair of majestic, pure-white wings grew from her back. Heaven and hell hovered a breath apart; the semi-fallen false angel and the true, initially banished angel looked each other in the eyes.

"I think that means I have to go," she said.

She's happy, he realized, all this time, she was searching for her truth. And whatever that was, it would seem that she had found it. For that reason, he tried to give her a smile—which, to the best of his efforts, came only as his usual smirk, but Jena Kalyna would certainly be able to read it...to read him.

"Uh..." The time had come for him to bid her farewell. Maybe he should say something important, but what would that be? Ulric chuckled. "I swear I can talk better than this on a normal day."

"That's okay," said the angel, "I'm not going off to die. I'll be around—it's just that maybe you won't see me. Ulric, I love you."

"I love you too, Jena."

Good thing it's so easy for her to say these things, Ulric thought to himself as her silhouette faded into light, or I'd never be able to.

☆☆☆

When the light faded, bloodred hair came into view. Valerie glided across the horizon with empty hands—without a single drop of blood, severed body part, or even her dagger, which hung as usual from her belt. Ulric squinted, trying to make out what exactly she had done that abruptly ended the battle and Navitusia along with it.

As if to show him even more clearly that she did not kill anyone, once she was close enough, the fairy spread her arms and spun around once in a full circle.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I gave him the crown of Venethema."

"You what?"

"I don't like him, so I don't want his blood on me," Valerie explained, in a casual tone that seemed to suggest it was the most natural reason.

"...let me get this straight," Ulric said, backing from her by a mere inch. "Elementals are basically immortal unless they're killed."

"Right."

"And because you don't like him, instead of killing him, you give him a kingdom."

"Yes."

"A kingdom that will forever be his unless he's killed."

"That is correct."

"I thought you—" he began, his sharp green eyes glinting with a slight hint of madness.

"I tweaked the crown," she explained, holding a hand up as if to put a pause on something. "Cursed it to self-destruct when its current bearer dies. Venethema will die in Sepher Andilet's hands."

At that, the previous monarch of the false kingdom fell silent. He turned his gaze in the direction of where Venethema ought to be, though the two were nowhere near close enough to observe what that land would look like now.

Ulric let out a curt snicker. "Venethema will die in Sepher Andilet's hands," he repeated under his breath, "And that's what happens when you don't like him. What happens if you did like him?"

Valerie flew towards him. She tilted her head, the smallest hint of a smile tugging at her lips. "I'd promise him death."

"...ah." Now, it was Ulric who advanced toward the fairy, closing the remaining space between them. As if to prevent her from backing on her word, he placed a hand on the side of her neck, ready to either grip her throat or caress her cheek. Upon contact, the skin that he touched turned purplish, but neither party moved or even flinched. "And how soon would that be?"

"Slow and definite, when I am done with him, not when he thinks he is miserable enough to die," Valerie answered, grabbing hold of his wrist and moving it to her back. The purple color on her neck faded.

Then, she wrapped her own arms around his neck. Her golden, sparkling wings vanished from view; his black feathered ones folded around both fairy and false angel. As one, they dived from what used to be a kingdom of clouds into the sea. Their gaze remained on each other only until they hit the water; then, both closed their eyes—to the body of water around them, to the destruction they'd caused up above...and to the ones they'd lost but would never mourn openly for.