Elysia
Chapter 27: The Spreading Blight, The Growing Seed

A year passed. In the mortal realm, it was a year of four distinct seasons, of grim battles won and lost, of kingdoms holding their collective breath. In the timeless sanctuary of the Aurora Palace, however, it was a single, long, and peaceful day. The rhythm of life here was not dictated by the sun or the moon, but by the quiet, dedicated pursuit of growth and the steady, watchful presence of its ruler.

Elina, now a young girl of nine, had shed the last vestiges of the timid orphan from Greyhaven. The magical nourishment of the palace and the deep, purposeful work in her garden had given her a quiet strength that shone in her clear, golden-brown eyes. She moved with a gentle confidence, her small frame no longer frail, her fox ears now perpetually alert and attentive, catching the subtlest songs of the life that flourished around her.

Her conservatory garden was her pride. The once-blighted patch of earth was now a riot of impossible life. The crystalline lotus at its center pulsed with a soft, internal aurora, and around it, Moon-Petals and Starlight Lilies bloomed in a perpetual, gentle twilight of their own making. The Elderwood seed King Theron had gifted was no longer a seed; it was a small, radiant sapling, its silver leaves humming with a vitality that resonated deeply with Elina’s own magic. It was a tangible link to the outside world, a promise she was dutifully nurturing.

Her own magic had blossomed in kind. The [Verse of Serenity] and [Verse of Mists] were no longer weak, flickering things, but applications of will she could sustain with practiced ease. She could walk through the Sacred Forest and have the most skittish of creatures graze peacefully beside her, her presence so perfectly harmonized with her surroundings that she was simply another note in the great symphony of the woods.

Elysia, in turn, had settled into her role as mentor and guardian with a surprising lack of friction. The routine was efficient. The child was self-motivated, intelligent, and, most importantly, quiet. Her presence had become a predictable, pleasant constant in the vast silence of the palace. The seething, chaotic energy of Nyxoria, still sealed within her shadowy prison in the northern woods, was a low-level, background annoyance, like a neighbour with persistently bad taste. Elysia had contained it, and in doing so, had achieved a new, manageable state of peace.

One quiet afternoon, Elina sat at her small desk, a stick of charcoal in her hand, trying to capture the likeness of Elysia as she stood on a balcony, gazing at her self-made cosmos. Elina was not a natural artist, and the drawing was a child's clumsy attempt, all sharp angles and disproportionate features.

Elysia turned, her gaze falling upon the drawing. "Your understanding of perspective is inefficient," she commented, her voice flat but not unkind. "You have drawn what your mind thinks a face should look like, not what your eyes actually see."

Elina’s face fell, and she started to crumple the paper.

"Do not waste the parchment," Elysia said, stopping her. With a subtle flick of her wrist, a small, elegant wooden box appeared on the desk. Elina opened it to find a set of drawing pencils, each one filled not with graphite, but with a core of pure, solidified color—the blue of Elysia's eyes, the silver of her hair, the violet of a distant nebula.

"A superior tool allows for a more accurate result," Elysia stated simply, before turning back to her view. "Practice until your hand can replicate what your eye perceives. It is a useful skill."

It was a classic Elysian gesture. A moment of profound, almost maternal encouragement, delivered with the dry, practical air of an engineer providing an upgraded component. Elina looked from the magical pencils to her guardian’s back, a wide, happy smile spreading across her face.

This was their life now. A quiet existence of lessons, practice, and a slowly growing, unspoken affection. An idyllic peace, hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. But the nature of the world is to intrude, and the cracks in their sanctuary were beginning to show, far away from the palace walls.

In the Great Scryer chamber of the Elven capital, the atmosphere was one of stifled dread. The year of relative stability on the war front had come to an abrupt and terrifying end.

Archmage Gideon, looking older and more frail than ever, stared into the swirling lights of the scrying map, his hands clasped behind his back to hide their trembling. For weeks, the reports from the front lines had grown increasingly disturbing. The “veins” of Malgorath’s corruption, which they had tracked so carefully, were no longer just spreading; they were pulsing with a dark, rhythmic energy, like a vast, awakening heart.

Worse, a new phenomenon had appeared.

"Report from the southern front, Lord Archmage," an acolyte announced, his voice tight with anxiety. "The Blighted Foothills of Astor have fallen. The corruption there… it has changed."

"Show me," Gideon commanded, his voice a low rasp.

The image on the scrying map zoomed in on the afflicted region. The land was not merely black and dead. It was stained a deep, angry crimson, as if the very soil were bleeding. The monsters that swarmed from the corrupted fissures were different, too. They were faster, more aggressive, their eyes burning with a rabid, bloodthirsty fanaticism that went beyond the mindless hunger of the usual corrupted beasts.

A magical projection flickered to life in the center of the room, revealing the weary, battle-scarred face of Kenji, the Hero of the Sword.

"Archmage," Kenji’s voice crackled with urgency. "We engaged the forces in Astor. We were victorious, but the cost was… high. Their warriors fought with no sense of self-preservation. They threw themselves upon our swords just to splash their corrupted blood on our shields. And their attacks… the energy is different. Yui’s healing hymns are less effective against the wounds they inflict. It is a frenzied, chaotic power we have not encountered before."

Gideon’s eyes narrowed. He gestured to his acolytes, who placed a heavily warded crystal container on the table. Inside it, a sample of the crimson-stained soil pulsed with a malevolent light. The Archmage began a complex diagnostic spell, his hands weaving intricate patterns of analytical magic over the container. He separated the energies within the sample, his face growing paler with each passing moment.

He felt the familiar, cold, unraveling signature of Malgorath’s 'unmaking' corruption. But intertwined with it, like a poisonous vine wrapped around a dead tree, was another energy. It was faint, but unmistakable. An aura of passionate, obsessive, and theatrical chaos.

An aura of bloodlust.

The horrifying realization struck him with the force of a physical blow. He staggered back from the table, his breath catching in his throat.

King Theron, who had been watching in silence, immediately stepped to his side. "Gideon? What is it? What have you found?"

The Archmage looked at his king, his eyes wide with a new, profound terror. "It is as we feared," he whispered, his voice trembling with the weight of his discovery. "The two great powers are not remaining isolated. Our calculations were wrong. We assumed they were in a state of mutual, ignorant opposition."

He pointed a shaky finger at the sample. "This is not just Malgorath’s power. It is a hybrid. A horrifying synergy. Malgorath, or his lieutenants, must have learned to harness the ambient chaotic energy that has been leaking from the Crimson Queen’s prison for the past year."

He looked at the crimson veins now beginning to spiderweb across new sections of the continent on the scrying map.

"They are not just fighting with the power of Ruin anymore," Gideon said, his voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper. "They are now fueling their armies with the essence of Obsession. We are no longer fighting a single cosmic threat. We are fighting a new, monstrous plague born from the unholy union of two different gods of destruction."

King Theron stared at the map, at the spreading crimson stains that represented a new, fanatical kind of war. The year of preparation, of training and strategy, suddenly felt like a handful of sand slipping through his fingers. The war they thought they were beginning to understand was over. A new, far more terrifying conflict was about to begin.

The new, unstable peace within Elysia’s domain lasted for several months. For Elina, it was a time of intense focus and quiet growth. The presence of the "scary lady" in the northern woods served as a constant, motivating pressure. Every day, she would practice with Laethel, her determination fueled by a fierce, protective instinct she had never known before. She was no longer just tending a garden; she was standing guard.

Her lessons evolved. Under Laethel’s guidance, she moved beyond the fundamentals of life magic and into its deeper, more complex applications. She learned that the [Symphony of Life] was not just a single song, but an entire orchestra of possibilities. She learned to isolate the "song" of stone to encourage resilience in her plants, the "song" of water to promote purity, and the "song" of starlight to foster magical affinity. Her small corner of the conservatory became a laboratory of life, a vibrant ecosystem that pulsed with her growing power.

The Elderwood sapling, the gift from King Theron, was the centerpiece of her efforts. It thrived under her care, growing at a rate that defied nature. Its silver leaves seemed to capture the light of the palace, and it emanated a gentle, soothing aura that calmed the entire conservatory. It was her greatest success, a living symbol of her connection to the world and her ability to nurture it.

It was during one such peaceful afternoon, as Elina was humming a complex, multi-layered harmony to encourage the sapling’s growth, that she felt it.

It was a sour note.

A single, jarring dissonance in the sapling's otherwise perfect life-song. It was faint, almost imperceptible, like a single off-key instrument in a grand orchestra. But to her now-trained senses, it was as loud as a scream. She stopped humming, her brow furrowed in concentration. She looked closer at the sapling, running her small hands over its smooth, silver bark. On the underside of one of its leaves, a tiny, thread-like vein of crimson appeared for a single heartbeat before vanishing as if it had never been there. The moment it appeared, a wave of faint nausea and frenzied static washed over her, a feeling utterly alien to the tranquility of the palace.

She ran.

She found Elysia on the high balcony, observing the slow, majestic dance of a distant nebula through a magically conjured lens.

"Lady Elysia! Something is wrong with the Elderwood sapling!" Elina cried out, her voice tight with panic. "Its song… it feels sick. It's hurt!"

Elysia’s focus shifted from the cosmic scale to the terrestrial. Her expression remained neutral, but a flicker of analytical interest appeared in her eyes. She glided from the balcony and accompanied Elina back to the conservatory.

She stood before the radiant sapling, a plant brimming with such potent life force it would have been considered a sacred relic by the elves. Elina could only sense a faint sickness. Elysia, however, could see the truth with terrifying clarity.

Her gaze penetrated the physical form of the plant, following the threads of its conceptual existence. She saw the magical and spiritual bonds connecting the sapling back to its parent, the ancient Elderwood in the Elven capital. And through that bond, like a poison seeping through a wound, she sensed a microscopic trace of a tainted energy.

It was a horrifyingly familiar cocktail. The cold, unraveling touch of Malgorath's ruinous power, now energized and amplified by the hot, chaotic, and obsessively bloodthirsty aura of Nyxoria. The Crimson Blight. It had found a way in.

The Alliance, in their desperation and ignorance, had given her a gift. And that gift, born from the heart of their world, had become a Trojan horse, a conduit for the very sickness they were fighting. The chaos of the outside world had finally, insidiously, breached her sanctuary.

A profound, chilling stillness descended upon Elysia. This was no longer a distant, abstract problem. It was not a noisy celebration or a strategic game. It was a violation. A weed, born of the combined filth of two lesser powers, had taken root in her garden.

But the true catalyst was not the violation itself. It was the sight of Elina, staring at the sapling she had poured her heart into, her small face pale with worry, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She was heartbroken that the life she had so carefully nurtured was being threatened from within.

Seeing Elina’s distress over something inside her sanctuary, caused by the chaos outside, was the final, absolute trigger. The dispassionate observer, the retired ruler, the reluctant mentor—all of it fell away, burned away by a cold, absolute fury that had been dormant for nine long years. This was an unacceptable outcome.

"The world's sickness has found a path into our home," Elysia said, her voice dangerously calm, each word perfectly enunciated. She turned and looked down at Elina, her blue eyes now glowing with a faint, internal light that was not of the aurora, but of the frozen, merciless void.

"Elina," she asked, her voice quiet but resonant. "What is the purpose of a gardener?"

Confused by the sudden, intense question, Elina stammered, "To… to help things grow?"

"Incorrect," Elysia replied, a chilling finality in her tone. "A gardener's primary duty is to identify and pull the weeds. So they cannot choke out the flowers."

She had made her decision. The policy of non-intervention, of quiet observation, was no longer efficient. The enemy had brought the battle to her doorstep in the most insidious way possible.

Elysia raised her hand. The air before her shimmered and tore open, not into a chaotic rift, but into a perfect, shimmering circle of silver, like a tranquil mirror. The portal showed a clear, sunlit view of the sky high above the Elven capital.

She looked at Elina one last time, her expression softening almost imperceptibly. "You wished to help," she stated. "You will. Your battle is here. Protect this garden. Keep the life here strong and pure. Do not let the sickness take root while I am gone."

This was her command. Her trust.

"As for me," Elysia said, turning towards the shimmering portal, her voice resonating with an ancient, terrible power she had not fully unleashed in years. "I am going to do some weeding."

Without a backward glance, she stepped through the portal. It snapped shut behind her with the sound of quiet thunder, leaving Elina alone in the conservatory.

The child stared at the spot where her guardian had vanished, her mind reeling. But amidst the shock and the fear, a new, exhilarating understanding bloomed. Her protector, her 'mother', was finally joining the war. She was not doing it for the world, or for the Alliance, or for some grand, noble cause.

She was doing it for her. For the sanctity of their shared home.

The cracks in the world had finally widened enough to breach the walls of the Aurora Palace. And its ruler was now stepping out to remind the world what happened when her peace was disturbed.