Midday
Alya shot to her feet at what Sapphire said. Celeste came and took her hand, squeezing it gently.
"Right after you arrived, we all felt it. A dark presence." She met Alya's eyes. "It wasn't from you, dear. It was an ancient darkness, seeking what you have."
"What do I have?" Alya asked.
"The purest form of the moon's Tide, Alya." Celeste walked her toward the window. "Every thousand years, the moon bestows its purest essence on a Lunari." She turned to face her. "That's what our kind is called. People of the moon."
"That's why you were able to conjure the one who helped you get here. Jayden," Sapphire added, coming to stand beside her. "Only a pure Tide is powerful enough to create something like him."
"We don't know if he exists only within you, or if he's out there somewhere in the world, and you simply drew on his energy," Elowen said. "But a pure Tide can pull the essence from a living being and create a version of them."
"Does that mean Jayden exists somewhere in the world?" Alya asked.
"That's what makes it strange," Elowen said. "Energies don't usually take solid form. They don't have personalities of their own. They're only a flow, air given shape. Once summoned, they follow your will. They exist to protect and defend you. That's all they're supposed to be."
"Besides you," Sapphire's partner added, "there was only one other Lunari with a pure Tide who ever had the ability to create a person the way you did."
Elowen's partner, standing behind them, let out a deep sound of utter contempt.
"The Rot."
Just then, the sky rumbled.
They all hurried outside, their eyes fixed on the same patch of sky to the south. It had darkened into moving shades of black and purple, flickering with lightning, rolling with thunder.
All around them, people stepped out of their homes. Others looked out from windows, balconies, treetops, out of holes in the ground, or hovered in the air to see it better.
"It's here," Celeste said. "Stronger than before. It's almost through the barrier."
Just then, a loud ringing blasted across Veyloria.
"The elders have summoned us," Celeste said.
Flying carriages came from every direction, stopping at different homes. People began climbing in. When one landed outside Sapphire's house, Celeste and her partner climbed in first, and Celeste held out her hand for Alya.
"The elders want to meet you."
Alya, scared, looked from Celeste to her mother. Sapphire nodded.
"I'll come with her," Nyla said, poking her head out from behind her father, Elowen's partner. "She'd want me there."
Alya nodded, grateful.
Celeste nodded too, and Nyla climbed in immediately.
They flew.
Alya sat wide-eyed, amazed at the beauty of the whole place stretched out under them.
Mountains rose into peaks wrapped in snow. Waterfalls poured down the cliffsides into the rivers. Forests stretched out in every direction, broken here and there by open lands filled with buildings. Alya leaned over the edge of the carriage, watching winged serpentine beings gliding over the treetops, great cats padding along the riverbanks, massive shapes, far too large to be fish, moving just under the surface of the water.
Some of the people below looked up as the carriages passed. Children with wings, or scales, or antlers half-hidden in their hair, waved from rooftops and branches.
Alya and Nyla waved back.
Then the clouds cleared up ahead, and the fortress came into view.
It rose straight out of the mountainside, grey stone walls climbing into silver-capped towers. Waterfalls ran down either side of it, feeding a moat far below. Trees grew directly from the stone, roots binding the masonry together. Hundreds of narrow, glowing windows lined the walls.
The fortress looked less like something built, and more like something that had sprouted and grown from the earth.
They landed at the entrance alongside dozens of other carriages. All kinds of beings stepped out, all heading in the same direction. Many of them stared at Alya as if they already knew her.
They probably did.
From one carriage stepped an elf and his partner, dressed in long pale robes, the hems embroidered in silver thread with ice crystal patterns. Behind them came Kaelith, dressed the same way.
"Oh there's Kaelith!" Nyla called out, waving at him.
"Shush, Nyla," Celeste warned.
Kaelith turned and locked eyes with Alya, then broke away and walked inside without a word.
"He's an apprentice to the Elfen Lord," Nyla whispered, taking Alya's hand. Together, they followed Celeste and her partner into the fortress.
A pair of massive doors, carved with spirals and crescents, swung open ahead of them.
Inside, the ceiling curved into a dark, star-filled vault. Rows of stone benches surrounded a raised platform at the far end of the hall.
"Sit here, close to the door," Celeste told Alya and Nyla, before she and her partner made their way to the front, taking their seats among the other elders.
From the highest seat in the hall, the one who led them all rose to speak.
"The fortress is in danger," he said. "Nyxara is moving fast. She is desperate."
"Who is Nyxara?" Alya whispered to Nyla, while the elders kept talking.
"A Lunari who turned rogue," Nyla whispered back. "We call her the Rot. She's been rotting away ever since she succumbed to corrupted power. She had your powers once, Alya. But something happened, and she used them to wipe out thousands of humans during the Great War."
Alya gasped. "Why?"
"She lost her beloved," someone said from behind them.