Olori was always a wildfire.

I remember my first assignment with Olori on the mountainside village of Tarcy as we follow the unknowing crowd to the dining room.

Olori was our self-proclaimed leader, telling us which way to move, what to do and where to go as if she held all the answers. Of course, we followed because she had more magic running through her veins, a look that could cut metal and the blessing of Mother Moon.

Now I question why she was like that.

The stairwell leads to an open compartment with wooden tables holding the weight of one hundred options to choose from, enough food to feed the camp back at the wall for two moons. Fruits from the deepest jungles and meats from every prey animal lay the scarlet table cloth.

I elbow Olori but something on her face brings me to follow the direction of her sight. A look of deep-set disgust.

King Abus. It's unmistakable.

My stomach summersaults as I stare at his expressionless face, the few and far wrinkles that stain his forehead as he watches us pool in and step down three mighty stairsteps that pull us into the chamber.

His skin is a soft brown like the bark of trees hidden in the deepest of the wildernesses, eyes like the fat emerald that sits at his throat, glittering and glowing in the slanted light of well-lit scones. Abus is beautiful, like a living breathing god.

"Welcome my friends and greatest aids to the crown, I am glad to see you all took my messenger's call to heart." Abus holds his hand out where three people sit at his sides.

I grab on to Olori's arm and scan their faces for some kind of familiarity but find none. A young man dressed in scarlet sits closest to him, locks of blazing red shimmering. He looks like a direct clone of Abus as does the girl to his right, her hair the same color.

The children of the king but how if no goddess daughters existed anymore? Abus only had one son before the daughter of earth ran away and only came back with war in mind. At the left of Abus sits a woman, her face hidden behind a curtain of thin but unrevealing fabric.

"What is this?" Olori breaths, her eyes watching the children of the king live. She hadn't killed them all when she used her magic on Indlovu.

"This doesn't change anything." I lower my voice and attempt to stop the shaking. "It's strange but what isn't strange about this place, about the kings immortality, about the skull-."

"But has a explanation."

"Vague ones." I say.

"Still it's some kind of reasoning. Here we have no reasoning, no answer and on top of the seers I-." She stops as the words become too brutal.

Olori leads us to seats beside each other, settling down in front of glazed hog starting out at me with vacant eyes and a twisted neck. A sword still sticks through it's back at an odd angle, blood spilling on the plate and pooling through cracks between peeled oranges and mangos.

"Zexo would love this." I dig my nails into the wooden table and lay my back of the velvet cushions.

"I don't want to eat, I want to run and fight. I want to end this quickly." Olori searches the faces of nobles that gather at the king's sides, begging for his attention.

"The time will come."

"When?" She flashes her frown. "This has been going on for way too long to keep putting our trust in the none partial being that is time."

Some woman prods me in the arm, her gold face paint drawing my eyes to her soft features. She readies her forks with one hand before giving me her full attention.

"You aren't dressed in the finary of royals but yet you are still so beautiful. How does one keep up with their regimes constantly on a mount?" The woman holds a napkin to her mouth, hiding her burgundy-stained lips.

"Uh." I lean over and try to conjure up some explanation. "I use natural moisturizers."

"Like Abus's daughters? We all know that it's something unnatural about his spouse, covering herself up like she's constantly riding through a sand storm." I notice a small smile creeping on her lips as she speaks of them.

"Aye, it's unusual."

The woman taps her nails on the table. "Thank the gods that I'm not the only one thinking that."

I notice her blue-tinged hair and the way that the water in her gobelet leaps from the golden rim at her very touch. A seal pinned to her shoulder showcasing the emblem of the grand docking ports of Gayaweye where Abus keeps his largest floating sea fleet ready for any rebellion on the grand waters or the islands destroys any urge to confide in her.

I face the pig again and close my eyes until Abus speaks, his thunderous voice hailing a fire in me as old as the first time I was told of his evil. He stole magic and shouldn't be alive. He stole countless lives to fill his fantasy.

"One thousand years have brought us here, to such greatness- where is my daughter and seer Nkululeko? I expected them here if no one else."

Abus looks to his twins who shake their head as to where their sister would be. Dead. The two siblings look off from their father's hard glare that watches the cavern as if he expects them to walk through the doors any second now. Olori watches me, begging me for some relief.

"I haven't seen either since the gathering." A man stands from his chair, wild cheetah skins draped over his shoulders. "Granted that they were looking for someone."

"Who?" Abus barks. "Did they search on the courtyard and stay until I commanded all gates and doors to close?"

The small man coughs as all eyes fall back on him. "Your majesty, I failed to get their answer."

"You failed?" Abus whispers in overwhelming mistrust. "How could my very own duel of information and strategy fail to gain information from two seers? Seers? You are a summoner, you could have restricted them."

"Why would he father? This is our home, maybe they just got lost." The fire-headed girl reaches past her brother and touches her father's hand. Abus snatches back, leaving the girl with a look of hurt.

"Enemies lurk everywhere in this palace, from the corridors to this very table." Abus stands, his fist crashing down on the table.

"Abus, calm down." A soft voice calls to the maddened king, forcing him to stop in an instant, his lip drooping as his words stop pouring out like a river.

The woman with the covered face faces Abus, her gloved hands reaching for his wrist. He allows her dove-like actions to guide him back down into his wing-backed seat without objections.

"The skull must be brought out for the feast." The woman strengthens her voice. "We must allow your firstborn some respect before they dissolve of this monarchy."

Abus takes a deep swallow, his eyes moving without any control. "Yes. Yes. Yes, that is what he would've wanted. Soon I will join his soul beyond the cobalt rim and leave Ve'hra. I will leave Ve'hra to ruin."

Voices rise to objection around me, finger-pointing and dramatic sobs. Olori takes a deep breath, searching for some calm in this sea of chaos or maybe even a place to run. Abus leans over to his spouse as his children look as if they hold no indifference to the king's decision.

The King will die? How? Is that a seer's prophecy about Olori and I or will he die another way. I itch to turn to Olori for answers but she's too swept up in the chaos around her. Her fingers kneed the tablecloth while her eyes switch from the left of the room to the right.

Abus seems to forget about the empty seats beside his daughter and relax in the blazing panic at his sides, it seems to be like a sedative to him. His spouse lifts her glove to his light colored lips and wipes away drool that seeps from the side of his jaws.

She ignores the rage poured towards her, a soft smile creeping up on her lips that stands barely visible under her heavy veil. The twins before her stare at her, their lips trembling as if they want to stay something but are too constricted to do so. Like something is holding them back.

"This is wrong. All wrong, none of this was to happen." Olori starts to rock, her reliance on knowing what was to come next shattered.

"Things will sort themselves."

"Stop lying to me and yourself. None of this was to happen, nothing makes any sense."

"Take a seat, subjects." The woman lifts her hand in the air, a flare of black whisps trailing between her fingers as smooth as fish gliding through the ocean.

The air freezes as do the voices, a heavy weight stringing all who openly object back to their chairs with sights on nothing but their empty plates rimmed with gold and the art of hand-painted snow swans.

Abus keeps leaning like he'll fall over any second from now and slip to the floor into a deep sleep. The woman puts out her black flares of magic that takes me a second to place. A second too long as she finds me and lifts her chin as Olori meets her as well.

My heart fills my ears like a drum as she keeps her gaze on the only two free from her tangle.

"It's time for you to choose the knife or a thousand more years of madness."