Fae returned to the bridge, to her friends right in front of the door to the Silver Star Sanctuary.
“What happened?” Madeline asked, staring at Fae with worry.
So Fae told them, as best as she could. She was still stunned that such a thing had happened — like she’d been abducted, temporarily. She felt okay, nothing hurt, but…
“Is something like that even possible?” Fae asked, staring at the scrap of paper in her hand — her message in a bottle, the catalyst that had sent her to the Seat of the Seven.
“No one back home’s figured out actual teleportation,” Madeline said. “There’s Blinking, and you can create gates and portals, but those both have plenty of limitations. Teleporting like that, from one Location to another, without the use of a portal or gateway? I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“And I wasn’t totally solid there,” Fae said. “I was kind of ghostly, even though I could talk and hear and stuff, I was partially transparent. It’s so… strange.”
“Maybe you weren’t teleported,” Neptune said. “Just like you said, you were also partially here. Transparent — very transparent — but still here, although we couldn’t touch you and you didn’t seem able to hear us.”
“But how’s that even possible?” Jupiter asked.
“Magic’s different for Enchanted,” Neptune said, her deep blue eyes thoughtful. “And more than that, the paper was what served to transport you there. Imbuing items with magical properties can give them abilities we aren’t normally able to access through magic. Covenant Magic is often done through an item, sometimes even a weapon. And Augmentation Magic almost entirely exists for the purpose of achieving surprising ends unattainable through normal magical means. Can I see it?” She held out her hand, and Fae handed her the scrap of paper. “Divination Magic isn’t my specialty…”
“You always sell yourself short,” Mercury said with a smile. “What do you see?”
Neptune suddenly squinted, leaning back away from the paper. “Now that’s fascinating,” she said, looking away for a moment before looking back at the paper. She stopped squinting, analyzing it closely. “It was so bright, almost blinding, for a moment, but now that’s faded. Just… traces… left now. It was charged with something really powerful — more powerful than I’ve ever even heard of — but it must have been for only a single use, because now it’s gone.”
“All that power, just to get you to hear his name,” Madeline said. “Sal… he has some kind of control over the darkness. But how? Who is he really?”
“I saw him before this,” Fae said. “When we were escaping the Fault Line Dungeon, I tried using the candlestick bell. And I saw… a man, wreathed in shadow, sitting on a dark throne. And it was like the sound, the hope, just bounced off of him. But the presence he had… I’m certain that was Sal, now that I’ve seen him normally.”
“On a dark throne?” Mercury asked. “But then… I mean, there’s only one person who would be like that, right?”
“The Lord of Night,” Fae said softly.
“This is just way too crazy,” Jupiter said.
“But Sal said I’d figured it out,” Fae said. “He looked straight at me and I said I’d figured out more than what he was there to reveal. He seemed… excited about it.”
“But why say all this stuff now?” Sonya asked, tapping her chin with her pen. “What’s the point of his timing?”
“There’s a lot that’s been going on beyond our own journey,” Mercury said, shrugging. “Us, Caleb’s group, Shana’s group, Delilah’s group… we’re all going through so much, and such different things, all across the Enchanted Dominion. None of us has the full picture.”
“Okay, but I think that stuff might be able to wait a bit,” Fae said. “Sorry, just…” She looked at the door to the Silver Star Sanctuary. “You guys have waited too long for this to wait any longer.”
Mercury’s eyes lit up, Jupiter grinned, and Neptune smiled. The three girls stepped up to the door, Neptune bringing forth the locket that served as their unorthodox key. But then Mercury stopped her and motioned to Fae.
“We never would have found this place without you,” she said. “Let’s open it together.”
Reluctantly, but unable to refuse Mercury’s infectious enthusiasm, Fae came forward and joined them. Together, Neptune holding the locket and Mercury, Jupiter, and Fae each with a hand on hers, they pressed the locket, their key, into the depression in the door.
There was a soft pulse of silver light, and a faint click.
The girls took a step back.
The doors swung inward.
“This is so weird,” Mercury said, staring at the Sanctuary’s interior. “It feels like…”
“Coming home,” Jupiter finished.
“Let’s go,” Neptune said.
The Star sisters led the way with Fae close behind, followed by Madeline, Olivia, and Sonya. Right inside the doors was a vast entrance hall, polished floors of silvery marble beneath their feet, grandly arching staircases to either side leading up to a high balcony. Hanging from the ceiling in the center was a beautiful, crystalline star-shaped chandelier.
The entrance hall was so clean, so pristine, and yet something about it felt… sterile. Like it was more than clean, or like it was only clean because of a lack of life, or something Fae couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Windows to the left and right gazed out upon a starry, nebulous void. And ahead, beneath the balcony and arching staircases, was another set of doors.
These doors suddenly swung open, and into the entrance hall strode a tall, elegant woman with head held high, shoulders back, her regal form wrapped in a stunningly beautiful silver gown. Platinum-blonde hair spilled down around her shoulders, and her skin was so pale and smooth it matched the marble she walked on. While her mouth could be seen, the top half of her face was veiled by a metallic, silver mask. It was an enclosed mask, without eye holes, hiding her eyes and expressions from view.
And yet something about the slight circle of her lips, her hurried steps, suggested a hope, a hope that had long ago been lost, and a disbelief at that hope being restored.
She stopped five feet away from the Star sisters, her head turning slightly left and right, as if she were looking at each of them in turn.
“Can it be…?” the woman asked, slowly, her voice so musical and resonant, echoing gently in the entrance hall. “You’ve… returned to me? After all this time?”
“You know us?” Neptune asked. There was a tinge of hope and longing in her voice, but tempered with caution. She held up the locket, but the masked woman shook her head.
“I’d never forget your faces,” she said. “Never. Mercury. Jupiter. Neptune. My Stars.”
“Your…?” Jupiter started, voice shaky.
“Do you mean that you’re our…?” Mercury started, but she trailed off, too.
The woman suddenly bowed her head. “I… I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Your memories. Of course. I shouldn’t have…” She sighed. “We have so much catching up to do. There’s so much to talk about, so much to speak on. And yet…” she raised her head, looking past the sisters at Fae and the others, “you are all here, as expected, as necessary. There is so much to say to each of you, as well. I…” Another sigh. “I am sorry. I will do my best to balance all that needs to be done. But first, I…”
“It’s okay,” Fae said, catching Mercury’s hopeful gaze. “Take all the time you need.”
“Thank you,” Mercury said softly.
The masked woman bowed her head. “Thank you, Fae Greyson,” she said. “Ah, I am sorry. Introductions. I didn’t think, because I already know who all of you are. I am known as the Silver Star Matron. Welcome to the Silver Star Sanctuary. Please, while I catch up with the Stars, make yourselves at home. Nothing here is closed to you. Explore to your heart’s content. When the time is right, you will be summoned.”
“It’s really okay?” Jupiter asked, looking at Fae.
“Yeah,” Fae said. “Go ahead. You’ve waited so long for this.”
And then the Star sisters were leaving with the masked Matron through the same door she came through, leaving Fae, Madeline, Olivia, and Sonya alone.
“I… suppose I’ll take her up on her offer,” Sonya said, staring towards the stairs. “I’d like to explore. And there are things we can only learn when left to our own devices.”
“Should we really split up, though?” Olivia asked.
“After all we’ve heard, it seems like this place is safe,” Madeline said. “And I… kind of feel like being alone, now that I’m here. At least for a while.” She started off towards the stairs as well, taking a different stair and going through a different door above from Sonya.
“Can I stay with you?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah,” Fae said. She had the same feeling as Madeline, of wanting to be alone, but that was all right. She usually felt like being alone. She was finding that more and more difficult lately, but…
It’s okay. Things are changing, I keep being pushed into situations that aren’t exactly to my liking, but…
It’s not as bad as it seems. And Olivia shouldn’t be left alone if that isn’t what she wants.
Besides…
…I’m not so sure I want to be alone in this place.
“Come on, let’s wander the ground floor,” she continued, starting towards the doors straight ahead, where the Matron had exited with the Star sisters. Olivia walked with her. Through the doors they found a grand atrium, big enough to house a great gnarled tree in the center, so thick at the base that all seven of the girls holding hands wouldn’t have been able to form a closed circle around it, and towering so high, its boughs spreading wide and sparkling with silver leaves under a domed, glass ceiling that let in shafts of glittering silver light.
“It’s so… peaceful,” Olivia said, but she said it hesitantly, as if she didn’t believe it.
Fae knew exactly where she was coming from. Peaceful, perhaps, from a certain point of view. It was quiet. Incredibly quiet.
But quiet and peaceful aren’t always the same thing.
“Where is everyone?” Fae asked softly, looking around the vast atrium. This seemed like the perfect sort of place for throngs of people to gather, sitting on benches, leaning on counters, chatting and walking together, deciding where to go or actively coming and going through the many halls that branched off from this hub.
But there was no one here.
“How do we even decide where to go?” Olivia asked, looking around. There were nearly two dozen halls leading off from the atrium, and at first glance they all looked the same.
“Let’s check them out,” Fae said. She started forward and Olivia followed, going to the nearest hall to the right and moving counter-clockwise around the atrium. They peered through each entrance as they passed, and were able to get a better sense of what lay beyond. One hall led to a library, another to stairs leading down, another to stairs leading up. There was a ballroom, a banquet hall, a lounge, a study, and more stairs leading up. Some halls wrapped around out of sight, and though they had markings on the walls, neither Fae nor Olivia recognized or could make sense of the symbols.
At the far end of the atrium, opposite where they’d entered, was a grated lift. But the walls opened up behind it, revealing a somewhat hidden path behind the lift, leading out to…
A garden.
Fae stared in awe at the beautiful scene. She felt like she’d stepped outside. There was no ceiling, and the walls to either side seemed to simply vanish for clear silvery-blue skies and a lush, verdant tree line. Paths throughout the garden were simple stepping stones, snaking this way and that through the soft grass and around bushes flowering in so many different colors. Spaced out almost like pillars, so evenly spaced and arranged in neat rows, were wild, spiraling trees that shot up in a web of lightly-leafed branches, converging at the high tops in a thick tuft of fluffy, softly swaying leaves.
There were structures, too — several alabaster gazebos stood out in the distance, and there were benches and low stone tables, pedestals with stone statues of many different things from people to animals to abstract shapes, and small raised stage-like areas ringed by low flowering bushes. Far ahead, along what Fae thought might be the “main” path if there was one, was an arching bridge over a stream that she could faintly hear babbling along.
“It looks like there’s a sort of main stage over that way,” Olivia said, pointing along the main path, beyond the bridge. “Should we head there?”
“Seems like a good place to start,” Fae said, leading the way. As she walked, she kept taking a closer look at the things they passed. The statues often displayed people, and though they all dressed differently, were different heights and ages and genders, they all had one thing in common:
All of them wore masks that covered the top half of their faces.
Their masks varied in style and shape, but they all served the same function.
Yet the Matron could see. Or at least, she moved as if she could see. Some kind of magical mask, then.
But…
If everyone here wears those masks, and the Star sisters are from here — or at least we think they are, judging from the locket and the picture of them as children inside it — then how come they aren’t wearing masks in that picture?
There weren’t any plaques or inscriptions to identify or describe the statues, leaving Fae at a loss for proper understanding. But the more she walked, the more her alertness heightened. She didn’t feel at ease here, even in this vast, beautiful garden. Though she treasured solitude, it didn’t feel right in this place.
And she couldn’t hear any birds singing.
No birds singing, no bees buzzing, no squirrels rustling in the hedges. The only sounds were the gently flowing stream and the footsteps of Fae and Olivia.
They crossed the bridge, and on the other side could see the distant main stage more clearly. It was marked by a ring of the spiraling trees, and had in its center a trio of chairs arranged around a dainty table, set for tea for three.
They were almost to the stage when Fae felt something strange. Like a prickling on the back of her neck, as if…
They weren’t alone.
She spun around, and Olivia with her, and the girls came face-to-face with… a boy. He couldn’t have been older than five, he was so small. Dressed in a silvery-white shirt and pants, with a silver belt around his waist, it was hard to really get a read on the child.
Because he was wearing a mask that hid the top half of his face.
“Hello…?” Fae started cautiously. Where had the boy come from? How had he snuck up on them so silently, and why?
“There is a darkness here,” the boy said, his voice gentle and musical, but with a bit of hollowness to it.
For a few moments, the girls and the boy were silent, standing there like that.
“Who are you?” Fae finally asked.
“Who’s who?” came a weathered, reedy voice from behind. Fae and Olivia spun around again, only to find that one of the three chairs atop the stage was now occupied by a… strange sort of creature. He gazed at the girls through small, round spectacles, a bemused smile on his face.
“Who’s…” Fae started, turning to point at the boy, “…he…?”
But the boy was gone.
“There’s no one here but us, dear girl,” the creature on the stage said. “Oh, but I shouldn’t say that with such certainty. Even myself and the Matron don’t know all things. It would be regrettably pompous of me to act as if I do. Perhaps there was someone there, and I simply failed to see him, as you failed to see me.”
Fae turned back towards the strange creature, now getting a proper look at him. He sat in the chair like a human, and held a faintly smoking pipe in one hand like a human. His facial expressions were readable like a human’s, but…
He was very not human, or Enchanted, or anything like that. For one, he had a turtle shell on his back. Or probably for a back, seeing as it was very much a part of his body. The only clothing he wore was a silver sash around his thick, segmented neck, but considering his body was very reptilian, the lack of clothes wasn’t indecent. He looked rather like a tortoise, Fae supposed, if tortoise legs were that long in proportion to their… well, tortoises had four legs, but this creature clearly had two legs and two arms, though his feet were wide and rounded like a tortoise’s, and his hands were quite oversized as well, with thick, stubby fingers that held the pipe surprisingly deftly. And tortoises, Fae was certain, did not usually had long, plume-like tails that curved back and up overhead, moving and looking more like fur than scales. And the tortoise-person’s face was… not a tortoise face at all. He looked much more like a…
“Are you a Dragon?” Fae asked, stepping up onto the stage.
The tortoise-person-Dragon laughed gently. “You have a sharp eye and sharp senses, dear girl,” he said. “Even when the only Dragons you’ve seen all look quite different from me, you still figured out what I was right away.” His face was elongated, like a lizard’s — or, as Fae had realized, a Dragon’s — with a squarish snout, and a resplendent white mustache hanging down to either side of his fanged maw. Despite that, his eyes weren’t reptilian like the Spiral Dragons, more like old, wise, silvery human eyes. Despite the reptilian mouth, he smiled and emoted in ways so easy for Fae to read.
“I figured it out, but I’m not sure I understand,” Fae said. “Why do you look so different?”
“Oh, us Dragons can change our shape,” the tortoise-Dragon said, a twinkle in his old, wise eyes. “But the older we get, the more a favored shape tends to stick — the less malleable we become. I am very old, dear girl. This shape is the only shape I have left. Though I’m not complaining — I’ve grown quite fond of it, after all.” He stuck the pipe in his mouth, puffed twice, then removed it. “Now, then. You have a great deal of questions. And you have quite some time before the Matron will be demanding your attention. Come, sit. Take tea with me. I’ve been looking forward to this meeting longer than you can guess.” He nodded once to each of them. “Fae Greyson. Olivia Quinn. There is one missing, but she’ll be around soon enough.”
“One… you mean Sonya?” Fae asked.
“Of course,” the Dragon said. “The three of you have a very special quest ahead of you. A quest I’ve long, so long, been looking forward to seeing fulfilled.” He puffed on his pipe twice, then grinned, smoke rings rising faintly from his large, reptilian nostrils. “I’m going to help you decipher your map.”
“Map?” Olivia asked.
The Dragon chuckled. “You know the one.” There was a twinkle in his eyes. “The map to the Orphan of the Dawn.”