"They killed the kings, all of them except Abus for the role that they had played in the deaths that they caused. The daughters of the Godesses lived as warnings against the evil of man."

I catch snippets of a story that a griot tells from her tent made of cheaply woven cobalt fabric and tight leather bounds tied into bows to entertain children that watch her with large eyes and eager faces. Only on a day like today, you'll see so many heads of colors together.

Sea blue for those under the banner of the tide, their locks falling in waves in honor of the great sea that kisses their land. Dark purple like mine for the banner of the summoners and darkness of the night found in every corner of Ve'hra. Red for those of might, chaos, and flame. White for the rare honored who can see the future and past like the griot.

Time and fear had killed the original powers of the first mothers of the man and beast, creating mutations of what was. No one could fly without calling down a cloud by the hands of a summoner, change the direction of a high tide with more than twenty under the tide banner, and changing the foundation of the earth was beyond comprehension.

Zixo rides on through the stalls, antlers to the wind. Her massive size is nothing in comparison to the riders that wait in chaining stables, dwarfing her both as animals of paws and hooves. Their furs shimmer under the blazing summer sun, reflecting the colors of their owner's magi of birth.

Clay buildings are flanked with massive tents that hold lines of bidders for bundles of well-ripened vegetation and merchants dressed in fine garments as their ankisas stay guard. These animals, born from the sand with their masters like Zixo are the reason such an establishment can exist.

This place was built on their backs, enhanced by their magi and the true tie to the goddesses of old. Their last gift to mankind is in honor of the way that many beasts aided their daughters.

The giant purple anterpanther picks up pace as we make it closer to pristine statues of the new gods and high-rise walls that sit atop the side of Jano's sand mountain, shimmering sparks of white and the royal cabinet's gold estate color coldly welcoming me to either a hanging or a victory.

Today is the celebration of the eternal life of the royal family but no more. No more will our magi be the cost for them to live lavishly under a banner of the King's son's skull. Today, I take power from both the thousand-year-old king and the Gods who blessed him out of pity.

I am the thousandth life. The self-appointed fall of the man king by the will of no god or goddess. My beeline for the wilderness at the side of Jano castle, the only ancient palace still standing is sure as I pass antlered leopards and elks with satchels full of merchandise strapped to their flanks is sure.

They think Zixo's ice satchels are full of fresh fish and prey animal flesh but instead is every flame incantation possible and crystal enhancer for the seers who await at Jano's forest for the sound of tribal drums to play. For the royal family to die.

Oil burners call to me to buy their fragrances of spotted plantations and grapefruit but after today they'll be thanking me. They'll be much more than a sliver of the king's life span.

"You think we can make it pass the guards?" I lower myself on the large feline's back, running my fingers along the tuffs of her violet-colored face. My tightly curled hair matches her beautifully sleek fur, falling along my sunburnt cheeks.

I push them out of the way as my eyes come in contact with the black strains shining through as a symbol of the royal family's drain.

She huffs, moving at a faster pace. I hold on tight to her jagged horns that grow wildly outwards like that of tree branches. We move along the maze of colorful tints and shimmering ankisas until she's running on the underfoot planks.

People of the tide create rain clouds that bring joy to people of all ages, cooling them from the hot desert sun. Their blue hair, dull and fading into uneven patches of black reflect that many are close to death. That this just might be the last time they hear a child scream as their magi comes to them.

Fifty. The end of man's life.

The end of life for those who live by the way of magi.

Those who don't can get their other fifty years by shaving their head with sharpened iron and onyx and denying all deities of magi, those old and new. Those are abandoned by the royal cabinet spanning from both sides of Ve'hra.

My finger dig in deep, fingers latched to both the shaggy fur of Zixo's head and her horns. She pounds on the sand, moving skillfully through walls made of beautifully spun and dyed over hangings and jeweled beads.

No longer will I hide on the outskirts, rebuilding what the king destroyed and abandoned more than 900 years ago to rid of old magi and the word of the goddesses.

I barely have time to hold on before Zixo clears a table full of magi-enhanced weapons. Swords that glow in the dead of night and arrows that summon clouds of light and dark. A merchant falls back into his tent, cursing words from the common language of Swathii.

"Sorry." I call back as he scrambles back to his table, worried that any damage has come to his precious merchandise. His white hair deems him as a seer who'd rejected the life of caring and searching for new children born in the sand by the will of nature itself.

Judging from the gleam of his muscles and his stocky build, he would've been a scout rather than a nurturer, looking for newborns along the sandy mountain ledges and the shores.

Bless the goddesses!

The marketplace slopes to uneven land, pushing us to the golden wall reaching up to the fringes of the pink and teal sky that shines like it has been made from blown glass and crushed turquoise. The wall reaches from one end of the distant castle's battlements to the other.

I scan the walls, pulling at Zixo's reigns. Purple sand spreads like a sea from the base of the wall to the start of the plank-based market space.

Two guards wait at the slotted opening, their mounts placed away as tattoos running along the dark skin of their necks. Both wear their hair cropped, kohl smeared against skin so dark that it contrasts with their hair perfectly. A tide and a flame with Great Boerboels for ankisas.

I know they will kill me if they find even a hint of suspicious items but I also know that if I give no reason to search me, I'll be more than fine on a day of celebration. It has to work if luck is on my side.

The checkpoint remains vacant, just the guards silently looking out into nothing, dark brown eyes without a sign of life. Their fingers slightly curve around the hits of enhanced swords, sparks of the king's eternal magi laced within the silver.

"Do you seek the Jano forest or our King's estate?" I shake off the shiver that rushes down my back as they both mouth the same words.

"I seek the Jano forest. I'm afraid the celebration is a bit much for me but the deal on salted beef on such a day was one that I couldn't pass up." I place a hand on the worn satchel of crystals, putting all my hope in them not to clank.

The tide blinks slowly. "Salted beef is nice."

"I agree." The other nods, lifting a hand to thick hair.

A trace of black appears in the hair of the flame, crawling up from his scalp up the tips in an instant. The wrinkles in his face define, reaching his eyes until they close halfway, the dark brown rings sharing their color with the white.

"Will you miss salted beef?" The tide holds his hand out to the other guard, his gaze remaining without an inch of emotion.

Red leaks from the scalp of the guard, dripping from his forehead to his face like blood. "I will but I'll miss the king more."

"More than your beloved?"

"Yes."

My panther lowers her ears, eyes shifting from guard to guard as each paw takes a step back from the scene and horror of the King's cruelty. The king's malice as the rest of flame's soul leaves his body before he even hits the ground.

"I don't love the King more." The tide pulls the weapon off his fellow guard and what looks to be a bottle of amber liquor. "Not more than my beloved, more than this bottle, more than Ve'hra, or even more than you."

He's looking at me. Not his partner who's slowly turning into bits of sand, wisps of his magic lifting in strains of scarlet like the smoke from the end of a cigar.

Zexo pushes off through vines hanging like snakes from the branches of massive Baobab trees reaching as high as the sky is tall. I guide her antlers and tear at any vines that tangle around the gleaming set that turns from a dark brown to a perfect white at my touch.

Her giant paws cause small creatures without the enhancement of magi to skitter out of her path, a small wild dog snarls for a second before taking the shimmer of her large fangs as a threat to be feared.

"He's dead." I find myself still in trance at the fall of the flame, his magi fading away and turning into the thing that we all are in the end, sand.

"I know, Xeli." Her voice is deep. "You've seen death before and trust me, you'll see it again."

Her voice rattles off the trees and drives birds up the ridged bark to high perches. She seldom speaks and when she does, it drives fear in almost every living thing in range. That's the case for all beasts born alongside a human.

Her massive frame slips through the space between two low-hanging branches swaying under the weight of a bird perched with no intention of moving. It peers through one lazy golden eye before moving farther up the branch.

"What chakra do you think you'll have?" Zexo slows to a walk, turning to smoke rising from the camp of my allies, the furious red signaling the works of a flame practicing their magi.

"Don't know. As long I can summon, I'll be at peace."

Her tail lashes. "So you'll want to be seer aligned with the Sky folk?"

"What up with you and your vendetta with the Sky inhabitants?" I playfully tug at one of her ears. "I mean, we live in the remains of their walls."

She snarls. "Those walls never belonged to those arrogant bastards. They are the reason why we live like lap dogs to the king, his beasts of burden while we die on a time clock like winged cattle with their feathers clipped and bounded."

I blink and I'm back watching the guard accept his death without one complaint. He's bleeding and turning the sand from violet to a harsh and ugly red. He stares out at me this time, watching me like I'm the enemy for wanting change as his body loses shape.

"They sold out the daughter of Earth but do we really know why? It was her aunt who willed it to save her kingdom and that's all we'll ever know. The royal family keeps their secrets and the gods and goddesses don't allow the seers to see it."

I hope I sound as wise as the words slipping from my lips that crack under the effects of the dry heat that only relents under the tree canopies.

"-they were afraid? How horrible, I guess it's all good, even at the expense of sacrificing the human race." She mocks me, unsheathing her claws as if she's ripping through the skin of either an ancient Sky or one of Earth's daughter's killers.

"They're all dead." I say. "All dropped to the ground from their floating homes as soon as Anka's killed the daughters. He saw what he'd done and begged the stone gods for magi back, a form of magi he could control."

The pantheress finishes the story. "One in the form of the thing he loved the most, a magic that would live in the skull of his son killed by the daughter of Earth. It's a reminder that nothing can truly be taken away from a man as callused as he."

She lets out a throaty growl of warning to some animal in the thick foliage before pushing off through the tunnel built only in a day by seers who got their guidance from a shared memory for the one-day makeshift camp.

Nothing more leaves her jaws and she slinks off, pushing her paws through the rugged mass of stone and grass that attempt to hide the mass. Stones fall around her paws in tiny patterns as her antlers scrape the ceiling of the cave.

I lift my hands to call upon a cloud of the darkest purple to form a crown to protect the gentle antlers on her head. A wave of hard cold rips from my shoulder blade first before a glow flickers alive and gathers above like the cosmos had been washed in fine wine.

The sparks become angry at my pain, pushing themselves upward at the stones with hand motions rather than commands. Zexo pushes through as the stones lift without an issue, her claws gripping onto the slope below hidden by pure black that holds the camp away from the rest of the world.

With one more push at the sandy ground, my magic snags at my fingers with a pain that forces me to scream, blood oozing from the splits of my fingertips the color of my magi.

No. Hell, they'll never allow a person who still gets harmed by the King's magi to lead the stealing of the artifact. I'll be more of a liability of falling prey to soul control if I can't master it.

I peer through the work of Summoners who were born into sands patrolled by seers who feel the hate that so many of Ve'hra's citizens feel. They were left without the tie to the King, left to absorb the magi of the ground and wind that left the souls of those who lived beyond one thousand years past.

I wish I was like them.

The work of one at my feet while I couldn't imagine even creating a quarter of this. It swirls angry, wisping around like fog near the mountainous region when I retrieved the last piece of wall. A piece taken by Sky's daughter to show the King's obedience, all the same, bringing hope that it could be found by leaving clues for future seers who would rebel against Abus.

"Quiescent is the only way." I slide down from Zixo's back, grabbing hold of her lightly rosette cover fur.

She shows her claws in disagreement but offers no idea of how I could create a cloud big enough to hold us both at such a distance from the castle where the skull distributes our powers.

Though, she wouldn't speak this close to so many humans anyways. I run my fingers through her thick pelt as an apology that she doesn't accept. In all her glory, she faces me and I slip my foot into a jagged rock crevice on the side of the massive cliff face dotted with overgrown grass that reaches my knees.

My head barely meets her shoulder, her massive jaws big enough to swallow a man whole or at least break him in half. Her eyes, a brilliant emerald outlined in black like kohl stare into the forest as a cluster of flame-bearing eagles float overhead with flares at the tips of their feathers.

"Where will you be today?" I ask her, giving her free reign to choose her resting place.

Her whiskers twitch, magi lifting from the end of them the color of her fur as if they had been dipped in star matter. She comes closer to me with two paw steps, her warm breath stirring something primal and ferocious inside of me.

It smells of sweetened fish and blood. I step closer and her eyes dart to my hand before her giant nose nuzzles at my wrist, leaving a trail of wetness that fades as she does into a beam of white and tyrian light.

At first, it's soft like wheat brushing my skin and then as painful as if Zixo had drawn a claw down the same space. I grip the tattoo of her surrounded by a chain of Calla lilies painted in the kingdom's colors.

Everything is his.

Everything belongs to the crown and the skull, even my very existence.