"Was dying for this worth it?"
Ilyana nodded. "Yes."
Patriarch Falcrow watched how her body slowly turned into golden specks of dust. Her face held no regrets and she was smiling, waiting for her time of departure. As she drew her last breath, his tears fell.
~
Patriarch Falcrow heard the news that another essence disappeared in the dungeon and he couldn't do anything but sit on his throne and sigh gloomily.
"Ah, Ilyana... What have you done to me?" He uttered her name and he looked up as if the one he was talking to was there.
He thought of Bella, his region that was filled with beauty but the ones who strived for it was the opposite. The flowers bloomed in different vibrant colors but the ones who tended it were dulled skin and bluish. The land is progressive but never the ones who lived in it.
Bella fairies lived---existed rather just to feel the emotion, sadness. No prophecies or writings have ever proved that their land was cursed. It was meant for them to live that way. But in Illustra, each region has a gift of will to feel other emotions and Bella creatures had them. Though, they were forbidden to feel joy as long as they live but they were given the will to wield sadness but expected to pay the consequences; Death.
And that's how Ilyana died. Joy caused her death but during her last moments, she was smiling.
She was smiling that somehow in a fragment part of her life. She experienced happiness, she felt free, and she felt... love in a happy way.
But to Falcrow, he despised joy because it took the fairy that he only loved in a millennium. Even though he never felt happiness once in his life, he knew that his heart belonged to Ilyana since the day the day he was born by the Bella's Essence to be the Patriarch. They were born together, only he was meant to be at the throne and she was meant to be the possession.
The day after Ilyana died, he swore to find the cause of joy and he will end it with his own hands.
Minutes of thinking, the doors of his room opened and his guards came in. Falcrow was suddenly alarmed and he stood up from his throne and walked towards them.
"Is something the matter?" He said as he approached the Higher Guard, Malfroy.
"Yes, my lord. I have found and captured the cause of our plague."
Falcrow's eyes widened at Malfroy's information. His heart raced at the thought that he will finally know the cause of joy.
"Who is it?"
Malfroy shook his head as a contradiction to what he said. "I believe that she is a woman. The guards and I have somehow caught her tending the gardens of the Dungeon of the Damned."
"A woman," He asked in disbelief. "The cause of joy is a woman and in the dungeon?!"
"Yes, my lord."
Falcrow's eyes glinted in anger. "Bring me to her!"
The guards immediately obeyed and they guided him outside his room. As he stepped out from his halls, he released his wings and fluttered it like a daylight bee towards the Dungeon of the Damned, just a tree away from his Grand Abode. His determination to destroy the so called disease was too much that his wings could fall off from using it.
When he arrived at the dungeon, he stormed inside the place and immediately headed towards the cell area.
"I wish not to invade this region! Let me go!"
