Earth, Sky Tide, Sun and Moon were their names.

Their daughters names were unknown.

Zixo slows with exhaustion as I walk along her side the rest of the way to Jano's rising palace. The jungle stands long behind us, snake vines crawling over the massive walls that lead up the mountain side. Even though Abus had tried to wipe out the history of the goddess, their names still cover the walls except here they are more of a mockery than an honor.

From my place on the steps, soft sea air settles of my taste buds as I watch slow tides wash up at the sandy land in the distance where boats and reed floats sit on the water. Voices of visitors standing on the railing catch my eye as they offer candied fruits in the name of good deed and celebration of the king.

"How does one live without a ankisa?" I take on the final steps where Olori waits, her mount already gone on her skin.

"They make artificial ones out of dogs and horses, animals that live by command rather than freedom." Olori speaks to me for the first time since the entire journey, a candied grapefruit in one hand and her scroll in the other. "Only the king has no mount."

She drips juices on the pearly white steps without so much of a regard. A budge at her waist is an open sign that she's armed, as I am but mine are much more hidden. I nod to it, to which she covers it with the low-hanging cloth of her tunic.

"We should head up." I pass her, keeping my hand on the golden railing to steady myself from plummeting feet below to the sandy sea of violet below.

"You are free to." Olori keeps eating and watching a group of young people near our age speak among themselves about the newest beauty regimes and the gossip running warm.

I wonder if they were raised by wealthy seers or griots hand and hand with King Abus. Their faces are painted with roses and art spiraling down their cheeks and foreheads, glowing in the light of the last of purple hues that bounce on the sky between darkening clouds and streaks of uneven light. They spare us no more than a glance before turning back to their conversation.

"You might want to hide your mount." Olori eyes Zixo. "The nobles have their mounts and not all of them take to well to strange ones."

Without a thought, Zixo takes the form of a tattoo on the back of my arm. Olori finishes her fruit in a matter of seconds before heading in the same direction as me. She holds her hand out, taking the role that she was painted to play, the role of a nobody who'd just been appointed a general seer of the scouts. General Anada and her messager Mer of the lower mountainous region of Lllide.

"What if they spot us?" I take her hand but refuse to allow her any closer. "What if the guards knew the captives?"

Olori shakes her head, locks of moon-white hair falling into her forehead. "You speak like an idiot, don't you feel the enchantment that circles you? The seers made us look like the captives by performing a blood magic ritual while you were off. Why do think the captives were guarded?"

A smile creeps on my lips as I swallow down her lie that she tells as easy as if is the truth. "Blood magic died with the daughters of the goddesses. It's in the story itself."

She looks at me, her stoicness remaining. "It returned."

"I don't believe you."

"Then don't." Olori steadies her gaze on a merchant with colbalt hair and obsidian skin. "We would be little more than stains of blood on these walls if these people didn't see what the blood magic wants them to see. They can't even see this goddess forsaken wound you gave me."

"Then why didn't every one at the camp see the merchants rather than us?"

"Because these don't know you, therefore they see what the illusion wants them to see. Not even a seer can break something as powerful as blood magic."

She leans her head closer to mine, her hair brushing by face but before I pull away, my vision dulls and a sting runs through my body. I open my mouth to protest but I slip into a dull white that explodes into a grand grey and gold.

Screams echo in my mind as they get higher and finally fall silent abruptly with gagging. My hands have no form in my vision but the air is choking and smells of hot metal and is filled with the chant of a language I've never heard before.

"Wake." Olori's voice breaks away the vision into pieces of silver and grey that become faggy but I'm left with one clear image that appears from nowhere and remains as vivid as a memory.

Blood staining the sand, staining coconut-colored fingers that grasp on to a bloody scroll bound to their hand with rope. The hand moves but soon it's crushed into the ground by the end of a familiar silver-coated cane.

Kirabo.

I take a deep breath, cold night air filling my lungs as silver light dazzles my eyes. Olori doesn't wait for the shaking in my hands to stop but pulls me along, trembling legs and all. The screams don't fade off as if it's another passing voice, it stays and lingers in every sound around me.

"Don't share your visions with me Olori. If you wanted to tell me that they were killed that's all that you had to say." I grit my teeth as we make it to widened court that spaces out around four guards and two massive wood doors.

"I could have said that but would have that made as much as an impression?" She lifts her head as the white bricks below our feet shake as a heavily outfitted guard graces towards us with an outstretched hand and cold silver eyes.

My eyes widen as I find the massive sword at his side and the millions of feathers that cover his chain mail. Everything about his hides most of his body except for his eyes making me question how could one even use their magic with such restrictions. It must fail and become useless as they of the renounced.

The people who renounced magic for a longer lifespan but it be useless for the king to enlist people who would deny magic for the sake of escaping Abus's evil rulership. They were so coveted that they wouldn't join our rebellion in fear that the magic that they called evil would return.

To them, no magic meant no oppression.

"Only his graces closest will enter tonight." The guard speaks, his voices small.

"Then I am in good luck." Olori breaks into a laugh that nor guard returns. They remain stiff, empty and straightforward. None of them move from the perfect line, hands moving to meet the pommels of their blades.

It's rather unusual when most resort to their magic than a foreign object.

Olori produces her scroll of identification, the parchment cracked and browning from age. I produce my own from the satchel hanging at my side, slipping it from the leather folds. He takes hold of both before letting them go and stepping back to give our faces a long stare.

Nervousness crawls into my stomach as the silence drags out too long as her gazes lingers on Olori. She keeps her composure, her stance at perfection. Maybe he can see it too, the absence of a break in that formality.

"Magic?" He questions.

"A seer. Only they can be scouts."

He turns to me who stumbles over my words, trying to remember that two people died for me not to mess up.

"A summoner."

His metal clanks as steps back as few steps.

"Last question. Do either of you have mounts that could be considered dangerous? Any who were trained to kill."

Olori steps past him, her eyes bright with humor but he doesn't challenge her, the question falling flat under his hard to hide anxiety that lines up with his young age. The other guards step forward in a union but fall back as she keeps walking.

My chest tightens as she keeps her eyes glued to the palace doors. She whispers something under her breath, words that make no sense as they come fast. Old magic that was long gone, coming alive out of the mouth of an honored.

Affirmations.

"Old magic?" I breathe the words.

Olori keeps whispering the words, her lips quivering until two of guards split from the group and take the ivory handles and pull them open to reveal a room of warm orange-light and grey walls that span out to show rows of guards in silver and gold.

No guard turns a head as we walk between their lines, eyes watching us but not breaking the mold as if they stand for nothing more than fancy adornment. We step in alignment with her the start and ends of her strange babel.

We break out the other end of the patrol line where a door sits, half cracked to the chorus of song that comes from violens and other musical instruments. Olori opens it, allowing me through first before shouting back and ending her chant.

"Old magic has returned." She looks at me with tears brimming her eyes. "We have to do what we came here for before news turns from rumour to truth."

Olori wipes her eye as if she had felt the best thing that one could, forgetting the people that chatter away in the corridor, tossing looks at all, including each other.

"The palace." I whisper. "We're here."