Chapter Text
A large figure, sized and shaped like a human was flung into the bright, blue sky. A curling, glowing drop of blue light hit it square on the chest. The figurine, on its way to the ground, started to vibrate, faster and faster, and then, with a loud sound, burst into a thousand pieces that rained down onto the immaculate lawn.
In the distance, some busy landscapers watched the spectacle and suffered in silence.
On that lawn, away from both the landscapers and the raining wood splinters was a gazebo. Underneath that gazebo, three young women sat on comfortable loungers.
There was a table with small sandwiches.
“Go!” one of them called out.
Another wooden doll was flung into the sky.
She reached behind, as if she wanted to throw something. The fist by her side was wrapped up in blue light. Static energy cackled in the air. She threw the magical drop, but this time too late.
It hit the wooden figure again right on the chest and it started vibrating, harder and harder. But this time, it fell onto the lawn, rolled a few steps and exploded there.
A small crater was left behind.
Various landscapers in the distance started to panic. The immaculate park just right in front of the palace was no longer immaculate.
“So,” one girl said. “Yoo Jeongyeon.”
The girl that made the statues explode, nodded. She had bunny teeth and was considered universally beautiful. Her personality usually preceded her.
“Yeah, Yoo Jeongyeon. It’s like an old contract my house has with her house. Originally, unnie was supposed to marry her, but I mean, after what happened, it’s one of the many obligations that are falling to me now,” Nayeon said.
More magic glowed in her hand. She let it glide in small drops around her fingers, like a blue, watery coin.
Jihyo, small, of sharp senses and generally worried, shrugged. “The Yoo House is generally considered honorable, disciplined and noble,” she said. “You could do worse.”
“I don’t know this person,” Nayeon said. She called “Go!” once more and another puppet came flying. It again burst into a thousand pieces when her magic hit square on the chest.
“Didn’t you meet her back then? Like, when you were a kid?” Jihyo asked.
Nayeon hesitated. Memories came back - a ruined city, a dying thing on the ground, a doll, not unlike those she made explode, only smaller. She pushed them back into the back of her mind. “I did. It was one day. I don’t remember much.” She pushed further against the memories, then said, with some fake bravado: “She could be anything: Unfriendly, a werewolf, vegan .” Nayeon shuddered.
Tzuyu, tall and beautiful, turned an icy glare at her. “ I am vegan.”
“I am well aware.”
“It is for the animals,” Tzuyu said.
“I am still well-aware,” Nayeon said lightly.
“You are a dog owner,” Tzuyu said, this time a bit sharper. “How can you eat animals?”
“I am therefore I contradict myself,” Nayeon said with the sweetest smile available.
Tzuyu’s gaze changed to one of a person that was dealing with someone who only had a vague grasp on their sanity. “One day, Im Nayeon.”
“I mean, technically, I don’t have to like that person,” Nayeon continued. “Yoo Jeongyeon.”
Tzuyu’s special gaze intensified. She exchanged it with Jihyo, who managed to stay neutral.
“There are plenty of people that get married for professional reasons,” Nayeon continued. “I mean, I don’t have to like her, do I?”
Jihyo took a very deep breath. “How about you try to like her?”
“That’s even worse,” Nayeon said. She shot at another wood puppet and it created another crater in the perfect Palace Gardens. “What if I like her and she doesn’t like me back? No, no, no, it’s better not to catch any feelings at all.”
“This worries me,” Jihyo noted. “You worry me. I mean, you don’t even know Yoo Jeongyeon. Why do you already … antagonize her?”
“I’ve read about her. She’s a total yawner. Doesn’t drink alcohol, somewhat broody, her father sent her to military school when she was eight - I mean … what the hell?”
“We can’t all be trained by our various loud aunts and uncles and ride wild hogs through the hunting gallery when we were eight,” Tzuyu noted calmly.
Nayeon sighed happily. “It was a great day, wasn’t it? Father was so proud, we had that wild hog for dinner.”
Another flying puppet was flung into the air and this time, Tzuyu was faster and shot it down. It was, of course, shot in an efficient way. There was no large explosion, no raining splinters. Instead, it just glowed for a moment and then evaporated in a faint buzzing sound.
“Excellent technique,” Nayeon said.
“Thank you,” Tzuyu said.
“Hi, guys, sorry I’m late.” Jihyo felt a shadow fall over her but when she looked up, it was already too late.
Sana plopped down, her smile bright and happy. Her blonde hair was a crazy mess atop of her head and the large glasses she was wearing magnified her already big eyes even further. She was carrying a body.
“I made something you’ll like,” Sana said and the kind of enthusiasm she produced worried Jihyo and elated Nayeon.
Jiyho moved to the side to make way for Sana on the lounger. “I hope this is a puppet.”
“It is a puppet,” Sana said and grinned. “I borrowed from the arena.”
“Stole it, you mean,” Jihyo said.
Sana pouted. “I’m planning to bring it back - eventually. It’s a brilliant idea.”
Jihyo took a deep sigh. “What kind of idea?” Jihyo asked, narrowing her eyes.
“A brilliant one!” Sana chirped.
With Sana, it was kind of fascinating, because people usually expected her to be a naive, empty airhead, who was way too beautiful for their own good - and then they started talking to her. Nayeon didn’t understand half the time what Sana was saying and all the time what Sana was reading, but Sana didn’t seem to mind.
Sana just seemed happy to be there - and bring her crazy inventions for other airheads to test them on.
“Is this thing dangerous?” Jihyo asked.
Sana pulled the puppet, made from living wood, onto the lawn in front of the gazebo and made it stand.
“That heavily depends on your definition of ‘dangerous’,” Sana said lightly.
“There are many definitions of ‘dangerous’?” Tzuyu said slowly. She eyed Jihyo. “Your language is truly strange.”
“There are not,” Jihyo said to their youngest. And louder, so Sana would hear as well: “There are not!”
“Will it come to life and kill us all?” Nayeon asked. She had flopped down on the lounger and popped an unimpressed strawberry into her mouth.
Sana just laughed.
It made Nayeon anticipate this new machine even more, while Jihyo grew more worried by the minute. When the puppet stood, on the lawn, it’s arms behind its back, the face nothing more than a blank plate, Sana finally eyed the group.
“So,” she said. “Since we have spend the last week listening to Nayeon unnie bemoaning her impending wedding with the youngest daughter of the House of Yoo, I have devised a plan to make us more familiar with her - and also push the boundaries of what is possible with spellcraft and magic today to its limits.” She pointed at the puppet. “Ta-da!”
Nayeon eyed the thing. She knew the wooden puppets from the training grounds, of course. They were made from bonewood, a very white and sturdy kind of tree and each had a core of a drop of living metall, to make them more receptive to magic. They were covered with runes all over that taught them spellcraft, fighting techniques, and martial arts.
Every child in the entire world faced one of their incarnations at school, where they were taught basic self defense - and at military schools, the Royal Guard’s training and related occupations, they were used to train guards.
There was a marking on their left foot - JYP in case of Sana’s puppet - indicating as to the manufacturer
Sana lifted the puppet’s arm. “As we all know, they are powered by crystals - this one is a basic training dummy, so its crystal only has beginner’s spellcraft stored. That’s why I removed it.”
There was a metallic box set into the puppet’s arm which was empty.
Sana rummaged in her pocket and produced a new crystal. Home-made, Nayeon could already tell. It was green, the size and length of an index finger, with a golden ring around its belly that had the spellcraft Sana had ingrained init with written on it.
“Prepare to be creeped out!” Sana announced and then lifted the puppet’s arm and put the crystal into the metallic brass box.
For a moment nothing happened.
“Really impressive,” Nayeon quipped.
“Wait for it,” Sana said.
Then it happened. The puppet did a step forward - and then another and another. Mechanically first, but then the motion grew fluid and more human-like. It then whispered: “ JAE WHY PEE! ”
JYP products were weird like that.
Like a fatamorgana, the air around the polished wood gleamed and something shimmered into existence: Blue hair, bright skin, the Yoo uniform.
It was Yoo Jeongyeon, not quite in the flesh.
“Sana! What on Earth have you done!” Jihyo exclaimed.
Sana lifted her hands in a pacifying gesture. “No character traits or whatever. so no weird stuff! I can’t get the whisper out, it’s a basic one ingrained into the JYP puppets. She looks like Yoo Jeongyeon, but the only thing in there is her fighting abilities.”
Nayeon lifted her eyebrows. “Where did you get those from?”
Sana shrugged. “Extrapolation. She’s an accomplished duelist and most of her stuff is publicly accessible. I just sorted it and projected it into the crystal. So if you want to kick her very cute bottom, you can, but I’m warning you. She’s very well trained. No claim to completeness as to her abilities.”
Nayeon stepped closer.
She had never seen Jeongyeon in person as an adult, of course, just through projections and illusions. One had been the speech of her father as to the agricultural crisis in her province, where she and the other members of her family had stood behind the Duke, in a show of support. It seemed like that’s where Sana had gotten Jeongyeon’s blue signature haircut from.
She was pretty, if not conventionally so, like Tzuyu, with a sharp jawline and serious, dark eyes. And she was taller than Nayeon, something the latter dreaded, and of course there were the usual things about her that Sana now was kind enough to remind her of.
“She’s a really sought after bachelorette,” Sana said.
“I’m more sought after,” Nayeon said, slowly circling Jeongyeon.
“Her sister is going to be queen, her other sister is an accomplished sorceress and she went to Yoo Military Academy,” Sana said.
“I’m basically a genius,” Nayeon said.
Jihyo snorted. “Since when?”
“Says who?” asked Tzuyu.
Nayeon turned around to them. “Yah. You two should be on my side!”
“We are on your side,” Jihyo said, “but -”
Nayeon swished around to her. “But what?”
“You know, you could be, I don’t know, a bit more reasonable about this?” Jihyo suggested. “It’s not her fault, because it’s an ancient marriage contract, it’s not your fault your cousin is not eligible anymore and it’s certainly not that poor JYP puppet’s fault that Sana happened to pick and steal it for you to be your prospective punching bag.”
“I am being reasonable about this,” Nayeon said. She formed a wrist, the blue light around it shimmering. “Let’s see what the punching bag can do.”
“Unnie, that’s a really bad idea!”
But Nayeon swished forward, her spellcraft enhancing her movement, making her slide over the lawn as if it were ice. Behind her a small cloud of dust curled in itself. Her hand held a blue, whispering and cackling ball of magic that had been the death of various sacks of sands and flung-in-the-air wooden puppets.
As she charged towards the Jeongyeon puppet, she gritted her teeth.
Are you going to run again? This time, I’ll have the last word. This time - !
She lifted her fist, ready to shoot, then the Jeongyeon puppet turned her head and Nayeon almost lost momentum, stumbling over her own feet. Jeongyeon’s gaze was clear, earnest, her blue hair moved in a slight breeze and her lips lifted almost imperceptibly and …
… a flash, Jeongyeon’s hand rose and something green and fast cut the air, hitting Nayeon’s chest squarely.
Nayeon was pushed back, thrown high into the air, making cartwheels. She could hear Jihyo call in the distance and felt Tzuyu’s judgemental gaze and Sana’s face, her eyes and mouth like three perfect, surprised circles and a click - did she just take a picture of her humiliation?!
As she was flung away and crashed in a large bomb into a nearby lake - swans, geese, and the occasional fish startled as to the sudden intruder created waves large enough to surf towards the beach - she remembered herself shaking her fist under water, as her emergency air spellcraft immediately jumped into action, creating a faint, blue bubble around her head.
“Yoo Jeongyeon!” she called out, her words muffled and strangely distorted by the surrounding water. “Not again!”
Then the guards came to save her and she had to rescue two of them, because their underwater spells were not JYP, but TS Spellworks, and immediately fizzled out at the first drop of wetness they came in contact with.
*
Nayeon is eleven years old. Her personality precedes her.
“Homework,” she declared proudly. “Is the most important thing in the world.”
Tzuyu, two years younger, produced the blank expression she was so good at. She sat on a large, grey rock close to the tent where they had relocated school today. It was such a clear, sunny day.
“If you only were good at this particular kind of homework.”
Nayeon turned her head to eye the girl, her expression dark. Tzuyu’s expression mirrored hers.
The wind howled over the green grassfields through the black and white cows softly mooing around them to fill the silence, then Nayeon said: “I hate you.”
“Thank you,” Tzuyu said and that was that.
Behind them was a small tent, with a table, chairs, Jihyo and Sana inside it, along with their construction and animation spellcraft teacher, Kwon Yuri. She told Jihyo:
“Well done, really well done.”
The small wooden puppet on the table that was Jihyo’s, made an elegant bow when Jihyo crooked her index finger at it and Teacher Yuri was extremely pleased.
She also had been extremely pleased with Sana’s puppet, which had produced a ballet recital, and with Tzuyu's puppet that produced a long line of martial arts techniques on the table.
“Nayeon!” Teacher Yuri called out.
Tzuyu almost smirked and Nayeon groaned.
“Yes, teacher,” she said, trodding over. The wind ruffled her hair as plopped down in one of the seats.
Yuri, kind, fair and desperate, motioned towards Nayeon’s little wooden doll. The thing wasn’t bigger than Nayeon’s hand, had limbs and a heart-shaped face. It was the perfect empty vessel for a spellwielder to breathe magic into.
Sana’s puppet doll pirouetted in a small circle around Nayeon’s failed magical animation project.
“Can you stop that?” Nayeon asked, annoyed.
Sana laughed her bright laughter and Nayeon could have sworn that Sana’s puppet laughed exactly the same laughter as Sana.
“Show me,” Yuri said and motioned towards the lifeless puppet.
Nayeon took a deep breath and eyed it. She knew all the animation spells in theory. She had memorized them. She had done all her relaxation techniques. She had seen them in action. She knew how to do magic, having it done many, many, many times, with evocation magic or summoning magic or even illusion, but the stupid little puppet just wouldn’t move.
It was too frustrating, especially for Nayeon, who was in the subjects she liked and preferred, usually an S-class student. Not as S-class as Jihyo, but almost.
The puppet lay on the table, like a sacrificial virgin, strewn around it books and notes and fountain pens and paper that rustled in the wind of this beautiful day.
Nayeon crooked her finger at the puppet. Its hip stirred lightly, but nothing else.
Nayeon breathed - once, twice, and again crooked her finger at the puppet. The small thing stirred again, but nothing.
This wouldn’t do.
This truly. Wouldn’t. Do.
She was Im Nayeon, eldest princess of the house of Im, heir of the house and future ruler of the province of Im. She had mastered water magic, like all from her house, and herbalism, and … and … she was fast and quick and could wipe the floor with boys twice her size.
Yet this small, stupid, little puppet just wouldn’t …
She eyed it, concentrated, and felt her magic wave in her. It made her finger tips tickle as she raised her hands, forming claws she wasn’t aware of. Teacher Yuri’s worried words not to overdo it faded away as her gaze narrowed in on the small doll on the table, the cows around them mooing in the distance.
The magic inside her whispered softly, growing in intensity.
It seemed like her view grew narrower and narrower around the puppet like an aperture and there was a faint warning and Nayeon …
… crooked her wrist sharply. Both of them.
Magic was released with a start. It unearthed the tend and send books and papers flying, as the puppet rose –
Victory! Nayeon thought.
– and then fell to the ground in a heap. Lifeless.
Silence. The doll didn’t move. It just laid there, all limbs extended, on the wooden surface of the table.
“Ah, damnit,” Nayeon growled and poked it with her index finger. The puppet still didn’t move.
Nayeon wanted to turn around to apologize to her teacher and then noticed what had happened. Papers were scattered everywhere. The hair of all present - Sana, Jihyo, Tzuyu, and Teacher Yuri - was a chaotic mess on top of their head. The baldachin of the tent was a sad heap somewhere nearby in the grass and all the cows in the immediate vicinity had been tipped over and tried to get - very confusedly - back to their feet.
Some of the Im personal guards clutched their helmets to their heads, all of them surprised and thoroughly ruffled.
“Student Im!” Yuri exclaimed, shocked.
Nayeon cleared her throat, her voice sheepish. “At least my elemental magic is really up there!”
A confused cow fled the scene. Others followed her.
“You have to warn us when you try something like this!” Jihyo said, holding on to Tzuyu.
“It was an accident!” Nayeon shot back. “I didn’t think I’d … you know.” She motioned at the chaos around her.
Yuri pinched the bridge of her nose. “Hahhhhh. Nayeon. Animation is part of your exams and while your general potency is quite admirable, you thoroughly - thoroughly! - lack finesse and I’m going to have to fail I’d still have to fail you.” She picked up the small, lifeless puppet and moved her thumb, index and middle finger around it, as if to pick an invisible thread from it.
To the surprise of none, a thin, glowing green thread appeared out of thin air, firmly attached, it’s singular strings reaching into the small puppet. Green, glowing pearls shimmered into existence and wandered down the thread, exploding into a thousand small, geometric forms only to disappear and reappear again.
The color was distinct, as was the form: Nayeon’s magic was green and looked like this.
“You did put some animation inside it,” Yuri said as she pulled at the threads. “But it’s all knotted. I strongly doubt it’s functional enough to animate it.”
Yuri patted the small puppet, as if it was something incredibly valuable and not some failed experiment that Nayeon was bound to hate.
“Animation sucks,” Nayeon declared.
The teacher noted her disappointment. She patted her shoulder. “Not everyone’s made for animation magic.”
“But I will fail!” Nayeon complained. “It will be the first and only subject I am going to fail!”
Behind her, Tzuyu had snapped her fingers and all the loose papers on the green grass gained flight and gathered in her hands. The guards helped some of the cows to stand.
“People can be untalented at some schools of magic,” Yuri said.
The words felt like a stab in Nayeon’s heart.
“Necromancers are bad healers. Fire elementalists rarely can master water magic. It’s okay. It won’t affect your grades.”
“But it will look bad,” Nayeon grumbled and shot the puppet a dark glance.
Yuri patted her shoulder again. “You are brilliant at other things,” she said and under Nayeon’s brooding glance laughed. “We will try tomorrow again, okay?”
Nayeon snorted. “I guess.”
Yuri clapped her hands. “Alright, everyone. We will continue school tomorrow. Just leave everything here. It’s time for lunch anyway.”
“You don’t think anything could be stolen?” Sana asked.
Yuri shrugged. “By whom? By the cows? Nobody is here and I sincerely doubt anyone from the citadel or from Shinhwa Forest would come out here and steal some school books and Nayeon’s little doll.”
She motioned towards the forest in their back and then towards the enormous fortress-like structure in front of them. “Plus I’d like to see the monster that comes out of that forest to steal your homework. It would be an excellent excuse.” She winked at Nayeon and Nayeon rolled her eyes, but smiled.
Yuri put the small puppet on the highest spot of the rock Tzuyu had been sitting on. Nayeon looked up to it, while the puppet just stared lifelessly ahead.
“Tomorrow, okay?” Yuri said, patting her shoulder again.
Nayeon nodded. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”
They packed up their personal belongings and left the table and the re-erected tent behind for tomorrow’s class. It was nicer to have school under the sky - at home, at the Im House, they always had school at the library.
They shouldered their bags and crossed the plain between Shinhwa Forest in their back and the white, many-towered Citadel in front of them.
Jihyo walked closer and nudged Nayeon’s shoulder and the girl nudged her back, flashing her a bunny-toothed smile. “I will be a great animation magus,” Nayeon told her.
Jihyo grinned. “You will suck forever at animation and we will never let you live it down.”
“Pfff.” Nayeon nudged her once more as they continued to walk.
Nayeon looked back. There was Shinhwa Forest, surrounding the snow and cloud capped mountain in its middle with the city on its slopes, then the green planes with grazing cows, and the rock with the doll on it. “This doll will be the greatest thing ever wished to life,” she said, but Jihyo just rolled her eyes.
Then Nayeon faced again what was in front of her. The large Citadel with blue banners on top of it.
They showed the Yoo colors of the family that currently manned it.
The largest flag sat on the highest tower, where the airships docked. Nayeon could see the small fleet her father had brought, blue and white: Sleek ships, fast and nimble. On the other side of the tower, the Yoo ships were in the port, green, large and sturdy, slower, but stronger in fire power and larger in size.
The Yoo family had arrived yesterday and ever since they had been in negotiations with Nayeon’s father and mother - and with the representative of the Bae King.
Jihyo noticed Nayeon’s worried look.
“It will all be fine,” she said, patting her shoulder.
She met her eyes and nodded, but her lips thinned. “They already have the JYP Artisan House in Yoo. Why do they need to hold the citadel as well?”
Jihyo shrugged. “Why do some have much while others have nothing?”
“Greed?” Nayeon suggested.
Jihyo shrugged again, as they trudged forward. The domestic workers of the Im House came to greet them and Nayeon again thought about the small puppet sitting on a rock outside of the citadel.
She felt small and insignificant, not unlike that puppet. Because she had not been able to excel at school, when the others had been and because she had not seen her parents since the day before.
So she angrily brushed her teeth and angrily put on her pajamas and angrily washed her face and went to bed angrily.
Angry about herself and that there was actually something she was not talented at, despite being the ace in her group and just generally that she was stuck out here, that she wasn’t home, that Jihyo was slightly snoring in the bed next to hers and that the stupid Yoo family just couldn’t give up the citadel but had to insist on negotiations, which made them be out here, in the middle of nowhere anyway.
Everything just plain sucked.
She finally fell asleep, uneasily. A light slumber, nothing more than a thin veil over her consciousness.
*
Sometime in the middle of the night, she woke up with a start. The room she shared with Jihyo was dark, cold and absolutely silent.
Looking over, Jihyo had turned to her side and stopped snoring. Then, suddenly, somewhere in the distance she could hear the soft howl of a draft. It unnerved her immediately, like someone whistling at her continuously.
She got up and regretted removing the blanket from her legs immediately. The room was very cold. Her feet blindly searched for the slippers on the floor and then got up to check the windows.
Padding over on thick carpet, softly as to not wake Jihyo, she reached for the window handle and was about to push against it.
It was closed. Definitely closed.
Then her gaze fell into the darkness outside of the glass.
The window allowed for a view of the wide planes between her and the forest. It was the reason why the citadel - one of many - had been built to observe it. Shinhwa Forest had some fascinating magical properties that made it interesting for the Dukes of the provinces, like the Yoo family, and everyone else.
Monsters came out of it from time to time, sure. And you could never be sure that that large tree you had found inside on Friday was still there on Monday. And there was the mountain in its middle of course, with the city attached to it. You could see it from the outside, sure, but nobody had ever found it once inside the forest.
But you also found things inside the forest. Magical things. Things you could do wondrous stuff with. Like Sana’s crystals. Or the ability to do magic.
Tonight, Im Nayeon was going to meet one of the wondrous things that did weird things inside the forest.
Her gaze strayed to the cows that had formed a tight knot for the night. The mountain in the middle of Shinhwa Forest glowed like a blue sugarloaf under the bright moons. Its mysterious city gleamed like silver.
That was not the strange thing however.
The grass waved in the wind outside. There was the tent and nearby the rock, where the puppet sat.
And Nayeon immediately saw it. It was a black creature with long, shadowy limbs and two round, green eyes that were huge enough to be seen even from Nayeon’s vantage point high up in the Citadel’s living quarters.
It made long strides through the grass, like wading, its arms swinging by its side. Then it noticed the puppet on the rock and tilted its head.
Nayeon watched in righteous anger as it reached out and picked up …
… her animation homework!
“Put it down!” Nayeon whispered at the window, her hands suddenly gripping the window’s sill.
The thing did not put it down. Indeed, it brought it close to its green eyes and observed it closely. And it seemed to notice something about it.
Teacher Yuri had said it would be safe! And that rarely any monsters left the Shinhwa Forest! Also shouldn’t there be any guards manning the citadel walls to shoot arrows and spells at whatever left the forest? Even the cows were useless - not a single one mooed in panic!
“Yah!” Nayeon huffed, a bit too loudly.
And much to her surprise, the creature that had wrapped long, thin fingers around her small doll, whipped up its head and looked at her - directly at her - even through the distance between them.
It stepped backwards, caught.
“Yah!” Nayeon said again, pointing her finger at it, even though there was a glass window and a lot of space between them.
The monster turned around and started to run. And Nayeon said again, louder: “Yah!”
Jihyo emitted an uneasy snore and Nayeon remembered that she was not alone in her room. “Yah,” she said, very softly, but with just the same kind of conviction.
And then, out of the fact that she was just eleven years old and too brave for her own good and also a bit too angry, she turned on her heel, stalked back into room and picked up:
(Not in that particular order.)
Jacket (1), shoes (2), shawl (1), water bottle with water (1) and a fluffy hat (1). Then she left her bedroom.
“Just you wait.”
She marched down the staircase, past the torches that had been toned down for the night, their ember crystals only shining just, past the bedroom of Sana and Tzuyu and of her parents, and of all the staff her parents had brought.
The idea that what she was doing was probably a bad idea occurred to her only once, because just as she was about to approach the door leading to the citadel’s courtyard, someone grabbed her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?”
Nayeon’s reactions, trained by her father, and by friends who sometimes tried to steal her sweets, were good. She grabbed the hand and with a sudden jerk, pulled the person over her shoulder and flung her onto the floor.
“Are you out of your mind?!” the person immediately asked.
Nayeon eyed her. It was a girl! It was just a girl.
“I’m out of my mind?” Nayeon hissed. “What are you doing, in the middle of the night, sneaking around in the citadel corridors?”
“I could ask you the same!” the girl huffed and scrambled to her feet.
Nayeon eyed her: she had a haircut that reminded her of a coconut and briefly Nayeon wondered if the girl’s hairdresser hated her. Was she a staff member?
But she was approximately Nayeon’s age, so that was not very likely.
Nayeon straightened her posture and lifted her eyebrows, managing to look down at her, despite being tinier. “I am going outside!”
“No, you are not. It’s the middle of the night, it’s cold outside and it could be dangerous.”
“This is why I brought my jacket and -” Nayeon caught herself, remembering who she was. “I don’t owe you any kind of explanation!”
Then she turned around and would have made a very dramatic exit, but the door ruined it for her: instead of being able to woosh outside, the door was so heavy she could barely open it and she had to throw in her entire weight to open it - slowly.
The girl watched her, slightly concerned and unimpressed.
“What do you want to do outside?” the girl asked.
“Not that it is any of your concern, but a monster stole my -” She tried to squeeze herself between the door and the wall, trying to push the door further open with her butt. “Homework!” she managed and then managed to press herself through the opening.
The girl opened the door so easily that Nayeon liked her even less.
“Don’t you think that you overrate your homework a bit?” the girl asked slowly as she followed her through the courtyard. The snore of one guard resounded from the white walls surrounding them.
“Homework,” Nayeon said, although she silently agreed with the girl. “Can never be overrated.”
“So you really want to follow a monster that could potentially decapitate you, into the Shinhwa Forest for your homework?”
“Everyone knows Shinhwa Forest is harmless and I just want to check if it lost my doll somewhere along the way,” Nayeon said, marching forward.
The girl, annoyingly, followed her.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous?”
“What do you think will happen? One of the cows will fall over and crush me?”
“It’s a rift monster,” the girl said, as she followed Nayeon out of the gate of the courtyard.
Nayeon had enough. She whipped around towards the girl. “You don’t have to follow me! If you are so critical about this thing, you can just go back! What are you doing at this time of the night anyway?”
“I had a bad dream,” the girl said slowly. She wasn’t intimidated by Nayeon - or scared, just confused. It annoyed Nayeon greatly. “Also - if someone is in potential danger, I can’t just let them go by themselves. My family honor would never allow it.”
Nayeon stared at her. The coconut haircut. The lanky figure. The potential smirk. The noble idiocy. Family honor.
“You are a Yoo,” Nayeon said slowly. Then, pointing at her with more accusation, she said: “You are a Yoo!”
The girl showed some confusion as to why her last name was wielded like an insult. “Yoo Jeongyeon. Third daughter of the House of Yoo. Pleased to make your acquaintance!”
“I sincerely doubt that,” Nayeon said. “I am Im. Na. Yeon. First daughter of the House of Im. And your family is being greedy!” Then she marched onwards.
Something shut down in Jeongyeon’s face as she hastened her steps in order to overtake Nayeon and look her in the face. “ We’re being greedy? You want what’s been ours for centuries!”
“You already have JYP Artisanship!” Nayeon argued.
“You have both the National University and the National Library!” Jeongyeon argued.
Nayeon huffed. “How does this compare to a producer of Spellcraft?”
“You literally have the greatest magic school in the country! Why do you also want the Citadel!”
Nayeon was ready to holler at her about the importance and economic advantages JYP Artisanship and really any kind of spellcraft producer brought, but was distracted by a faint: “Moo!” sound.
They turned to look around. The forest was suddenly much closer than they had anticipated, the leaves of the trees faintly gleaming in the dark. Nayeon could hear them whisper. She noticed that they had passed the tent and the rock and she couldn’t remember when.
She looked around and noticed that all the cows were facing the forest, silent, attentive. She wondered what had caught their attention, but then she noticed it.
“Do you hear that?” Jeongyeon asked, standing in the waist high grass a few steps next to her.
Nayeon did hear that. There was soft music, like a gossamer web seeping out of the trees, coming from the forest. It was sweet and oddly familiar. Like a faint memory that someone had forgotten and that suddenly started to stir.
“Yeah … When did we pass the rock and the tent?”
“Not sure,” Jeongyeon said. She looked around. “We sure moved quick.”
Nayeon made a step forward. It seemed like the trees did the same, suddenly much closer than one step would bring them forward. Or did it just look that way? Because in the night everything was different?
Nayeon walked slowly, carefully, Jeongyeon next to her, their steps almost in sync. The forest did come crawling faster towards them and if it would have been a dark, black, scary forest, Nayeon would have just stopped walking, but the trees, each leaf looking like a polished emerald, were just too pretty.
They could easily see where the creature had entered the forest: the grass was stomped down and there was one cow that had been tipped over. In between the trees, covered by moss and by grass, sat an arch made from white stone. It’s tip had been broken off. It looked like a messy invitation.
Nayeon eyed it. Guards from the citadel entered the forest all the time, in the hopes of finding powerful magical artifacts to be used in the sprawling magical economy of spellcrafts and spellcores, that enabled people to do magic.
Shinhwa Forest usually allowed for people to roam itt, but nobody had ever reached the mountain or even the city. There had been stories about people stumbling over some ruins that disappeared when others tried to find them again the next day, but there had been no stories about an arch.
Or had there been?
“Do you still think this is a good idea?” Jeongyeon asked, who had seen the arch as well.
“What, are you scared? Is the mighty Yoo warrior scared?”
“Pfff. No! Are you?” Jeongyeon said.
Nayeon eyed her and thought about what she knew about Shinhwa Forest. It only spat out monsters on occasion, it was harmless and the forest kicked you out after a day.
“No!” Nayeon called out and then started running.
She heard Jeongyeon’s voice - stupid Jeongyeon’s voice - behind her and then she was by the arch and then inside the forest. The music had suddenly become louder.
She couldn’t place the instrument, only that it was unbearably sweet. A flute? A piano?
She looked back - there were only trees behind her and the arch and trees in front of her. The Shinhwa Plains were nowhere to be seen.
And then she turned to look in front of her and it was too late: there was a branch sticking out of the ground and of course she stumbled over it. Reaching out with her hands, she braces herself, but the ground did a small dip downwards. She pushed her hands forward to soften the fall, scraping the skin of her palms in the process.
Gravity pulled - first she slid down the slope like a human sled, then she started rolling, stones and branches and woodwork digging into her body, as she rolled down, down, down …
… the world spinning around her and finally, face first, her ego and body bruised equally, she came to a stop.
“Just great. Great. Great,” she muttered. She could feel her hair being ruined, could feel the mud sticking to her face.
And Jeongyeon … Yoo Jeongyeon, was nowhere to be seen. Of course.
She wanted to sit up and clean herself up, but the moment she tried, her back was hit by something heavy and she was pinned into the ground once more.
Jeongyeon’s face appeared next to hers. “Stay down!”
“I will not -,” but Jeongyeon grabbed her face and made her look forward. “Ohhhhh.” The sound faded to a whisper and then away, as she watched frozen.
She felt a cold hand grasp at her guts as a group of people - a procession - passed them, not even two Nayeon-lengths away.
They seemed … strange. Old fashioned.
Magic had changed a lot in the past centuries, the development from wands and staffs to the markings on everyone’s lower left arm that stored all magic being the largest development. Yet all of them carried old fashioned wands, dangling by their belts.
They wore long, expensive robes and thin tiaras on their foreheads as they slowly walked by, deep in conversation. They were so close, yet their voices sounded like they came from a long corridor. When they had passed them, Nayeon could hear them laugh in the distance.
She still lay there, hurting and frozen. Then whispered: “People live here?”
Jeongyeon shook her head. “I have never heard of anyone living in Shinhwa Forest, much less any other Rift! This place is teeming with magic and it’s not safe!”
Nayeon lifted her head. They were gone, having disappeared somewhere in the forest.
When Nayeon was convinced that they were safe, she shook off Jeongyeon and sat up, patting herself down. It was only superficial cleaning, she knew, but her dignity felt slightly better afterwards. Then she started to walk.
“Where are you going?”
“Following them!”
Jeongyeon pulled her back. “Are you out of your mind? We have to leave!”
“Not without my puppet!”
“Homework is not important enough to die for it, Nayeon!”
“First of all, it’s unnie to you and second: Of course it is! Also, this is theft and I want my property back!”
Jeongyeon stared at her, a strange revelation passing over her face, her eyes comically wide. “You are crazy!” she accused her.
Nayeon huffed and marched on. “I may be crazy but what’s to say about the person who followed the crazy person voluntarily?”
With much satisfaction, she heard Jeongyeon huff behind her as they walked.
She thought about the newspapers the next morning:
Im and Yoo princesses lost in Shinhwa Forest. JYP Academy loses its brightest student. More at six.
She would be such a loss, academically.
The music grew clearer and now she was quite sure that it was a piano playing, somewhere in the distance.
“It sounds beautiful,” she said.
“And creepy,” Jeongyeon added.
The thin path she followed, covered by moss, curled into the forest, and went up a slight hill. Around her the forest was so green with so much woodwork, she couldn’t see anything besides greenery. There was a constant concert of faint sounds though:
The humming of insects, the creaks coming from the trees, the breeze rustling the leaves, the faint music in the distance. She noticed with some shock a large beetle - gleaming as if made from brass - crawling up a bark.
It spread its wings and the brass that covered the actual wings, folded away, revealing emerald, transparent wings. They both ducked as it zipped over their heads and disappeared in the forest.
“Geez, these things are enormous!” Nayeon mumbled.
“Just like your ego,” Jeongyeon said.
“I hate you,” Nayeon answered without even looking at her.
“I’m glad,” Jeongyeon said.
The path broadened somehow and with every step, the forest cleared, the trees parting like curtains. Nayeon was almost sure she could see them move.
“This can’t be natural,” she said.
“I mean, technically, nothing in the Rift is natural and nothing in here makes sense,” Jeongyeon said.
“Some things make sense,” Nayeon said. “We know that every Thursday on a full moon, there’s quite a pretty ruin with a well in the North Western corner of the rift. I hear it’s a popular spot for wedding shoots.”
“How does that make sense?!”
“The Thursday full moon thing or the popular wedding shoot thing?”
Jeongyeon threw her hands. “Both! Why would adults even do that?”
Nayeon shrugged, her face broadcasting that she knew more about everything than Jeongyeon. “I do think that most phenomena here follow certain, albeit complicated rules that we just haven’t discovered yet.”
Jeongyeon’s face was blank. “Every second Thursday a red turtle leaves the Rift, clamours four times at exactly four twenty three in the night, scaring the cows, only to return to Shinhwa Forest until next Thursday in two weeks.”
“I said they follow certain, albeit complicated rules. I didn’t say they make sense!”
Grumpy silence followed that exchange, as they followed the small path. It changed, started to widen and then developed occasional and then regular cobble stones, covered with moss.
In front of them, covered by grass, opened a two-winged, gigantic gate, covered with tiny, blue tiles. It offered a way past a large, golden wall. One wing of the gate was pulled from its hinges, hanging askew with a tree having grown around it: the tree had forked around the gate and unified right over it once more. The gate featured an enormous dent that had curled the upper corner inwards, like the page of a well-read book.
It had red leaves and tiny, golden berries hanging from it.
The way towards the gate was plastered with numerous craters, filled with water, plants and flowers. In some of them, tiny blue ducks quacked at the intruders.
Nayeon and Jeongyeon stared at the enormous structure for a long moment, gaping.
“You are kidding me,” Nayeon said. “Our parents are never going to believe us.”
“That we followed a monster for your homework into the Shinhwa Rift and found, purely by accident, the city that basically every Rift Guardian has ever tried to find?” Jeongyeon huffed. “Ya think?”
“Oh, shut it. Let’s just find my doll and be gone. I’m already concerned about our way back.”
Jeongyeon huffed harder. “Oh, now you are concerned?”
She swatted at her. God that girl was annoying. Nayeon hoped to be done with this and then never see her again. Nayeon understood why her parents were having such a hard timing dealing with the Yoos:
If they were as annoying and stubborn as Jeongyeon, her parents truly had a difficult job.
As they climbed over parts and bits that had fallen down the wall into the city. The faint music mixed with a strange clunking sound that repeated in a regular rhythm.
It opened to a large street that was covered with grass here and there. Houses and towers, large villas, mansions and destroyed shops seamed the enormous boulevard towards the mountain in the distance and the city clinging to its slopes. Nayeon realized that the city on the mountain wasn’t a city, but a palace, destroyed like the city around them.
The most conspicuous thing however, besides the regular, metallic clanking that filled the air, were the statues.
They were everywhere, covered with small flowers and moss, made from stone. Most of them were frozen in a kind of defensive posture, their hands lifted to protect their eyes as they all faced the mountain.
“What do you think happened here?” Jeongyeon asked, as she looked around.
“War?” Nayeon suggested.
Jeongyeon shuddered. “We really shouldn’t be here.”
“But look. It’s all overgrown.” She motioned towards the formerly white marble buildings that had lost their blue roofs, only skeletons remaining. “Nobody has been here in a thousand years.”
“But what happened to these people?” Jeongyeon asked, motioning at a large knight standing close by.
“They are statues, Jeongyeon,” Nayeon said.
“Look at them! You think some artist made hundreds of statues that looked like - like this and then just decided to put them … everywhere? They are not statues, Nayeon. Something happened to them and then …”
“Turned them to what, stone? There’s not a single spell that changes matter at that kind of depth,” Nayeon said. “And at the same time too.”
“And yet, here we are!”
Nayeon eyed her then the statues and her lips created a thin line. Then suddenly there was some warmth on her arm and when she looked down, it was Jeongyeon’s hand. “It’s not safe to go forward,” she said.
Nayeon looked up, prepared to snark at her - and was taken aback by her aggressively sincere and kind expression. It made her like her more and less at the same time.
She shook her arm away. “I will get back my doll,” she said and then stalked forward.
In the distance, the clanking sound had stopped. Only the soft music remained.
Jeongyeon frowned. “Why is it gone?”
“Lunch break?” Nayeon suggested.
She heard the sigh Jeongyeon emitted, but the other girl followed her.
“Seems like this was some sort of artisan district,” she said as she pointed at various workshops around them.
“I wonder how long this city has been destroyed,” Nayeon wondered.
“And what destroyed it - or who …” Her voice faded away and their steps slowed down.
The street opened to an enormous marketplace. Most of the stands had already been destroyed, only wooden skeletons with barely moving pieces of cloth left. Here too, statues stood scattered around, all facing the mountain, most shielding their eyes from whatever the mountain had done to them.
But the chaos, the destruction, and the conquest of nature that had taken place here as well was not the most impressive thing this place had to offer.
In the middle of the round plaza a few steps led up to a small pavilion built from golden stone. Except for vines that had crept up the sides, it remained completely untouched, the brass shingles gleaming gently, the emerald and ember mosaics peeking out from behind the leaves. The music seemed to come out of that place as well.
An anvil stood there, made from a light, transparent, violet material. It looked like it was made from glass, but inside swirled, like small fireflies, a thousand tiny, blue stars. A hammer, larger than Nayeon, leaned on it’s side, the head silver and gleaming.
And atop of the anvil, there sat Nayeon’s little puppet, like it was waiting for her.
Jeongyeon’s hand shot out immediately, pulling her back. “It’s a trap!”
And over her nervous heartbeat and her stubbornness, well-inherited from thousands of stubborn ancestors, her voice called: “A trap by whom? Nobody is here!”
“Except for the monster who took it! Duh!”
Nayeon motioned around. “Do you see a monster somewhere around here?” She pointed. “We take the doll and then we make a run for it and be home by breakfast.”
Jeongyeon eyed her. “You are absolutely crazy!”
“It’s called being effective,” Nayeon said and then started to walk forward, through the rubble on the ground and the low grass that had started to push through the cobbled street.
Jeongyeon followed her half the way, then stopped, looking around nervously. A gust of wind rolled over the plaza.
Nayeon took the steps up to the small building, the doll coming into view, looking small and innocent, its face blank. Only a few steps …
She felt surprisingly calm, almost serene, a stark contrast to Jeongyeon’s obvious nervousness.
Then she noticed it.
There were … stains on the ground. Like black ink that had eaten itself into the stairs and … into the columns that were holding the roof of the pavilion. It struck Nayeon as weird, because the fluid looked like oil, just darker - blacker, if that made any sense - and it seemed to move, vibrate somehow, dance with the sweet music that seemed thick like honey.
She looked back at Jeongyeon, who looked at her. The girl had come closer and made a fast motion with her hands, wanting her to hurry up. Nayeon managed to roll her eyes at her then turned back to the path ahead.
As she moved forward, she noticed more.
A large axe with a broken handle, so big that no human could wield it by themselves, was stuck in one of the rock columns. The handle laid on the ground, grass already curling around it. She finished the last steps to the anvil - and was for a moment surprised at its sheer beauty.
Was it made from a gem? Or was it metall?
But it didn’t matter.
She took the last step and reached out for her doll, which sat there, unharmed. It felt light and familiar in the palm of her hand.
Her eyes went to the head of the axe in the column that had been put there with an enormous amount of force. More stains covered the floor here and some lead down the steps on the other side of the pavilion …
… and Nayeon froze.
Something laid on the ground, on the highest chair. A small, bronze music box. It emitted the music that was heard all over this place. And next to it, outstretched on the stairs laid something else.
No.
Someone.
It was a creature, black, enormous - large enough to wield that axe, a panicked part of her brain screamed at her. A long silver spear stuck out of its chest, a chest …
… that moved under heavy, labored breath.
Bythegodsbythegodsbythegods, Nayeon thought and stumbled back, but couldn’t bring herself to look away, pushing over the music box. With a metallic sound, it rolled down the stairs like a dice.
The creature’s body was completely covered with black scales that were dusted with gold. The head reminded her of a massive lizard head - and then an eye opened somewhere in it, golden too, the iris round and then it looked at her and narrowed down to a slit.
Nayeon screamed at the sight and turned, only to see Jeongyeon run away.
The coward! The - the stupid, gutless, spineless coward!
And then suddenly her sight was obscured.
She looked up - long tattered, black clothing, long limbs, a rusty sword dangling from the hip and a face covered by a golden mask that had round, large green glass eyes and a curved beak, like a raven.
It reached out with a claw-like hand, and Nayeon screamed louder and louder, the sound running through the city like a wildfire. The creature touched her shoulder -
No, no, no, no, no!
She saw a massive body lift behind it, scales shimmering in the sun.
Again she screamed, high-pitched and panicked, as she was pulled roughly to the side, and then ...
… and then darkness.
Im Nayeon was found, unharmed and doll-less, outside the forest three days later. She woke up with anger and Yoo Jeongyeon, the coward, who had left her behind, and confusion as to her memories.
The citadel went to her family.
Yoo Jeongyeon, or any member of the Yoo family, she never saw again. Which was probably for the better, because she would have screamed at her and probably punched her.
The anger at the Yoo girl festered as time went by and Nayeon promised revenge.
She hadn’t expected it to take the form of an engagement or a crown.
Her parents never allowed her to return to the Shinhwa Rift - and Nayeon had no particular desire for it.
Then she became Crown Princess and Jeongyeon was designated Queen Consort and everything changed.
*
This is the world.
We see the palace of the king with its white towers, curved windows, large gates, and red-topped walls lay in the sun of a new day, the capital city splashed around it, reaching into the surrounding fields and plains like the tips of a star.
Somewhere in its gardens, Nayeon is shooting magic at wooden puppets.
A river crosses the city, cutting it into half from East to West.
We follow this river to the East, fly over forests and fields and smaller cities and villages where people go about their day in the cool sunny weather of a late spring day that smells like rain from the night before.
We fly over four provinces - Park, Kwon, Lee and Kang - until we reach the Yoo province. Beautiful, with the Yoo Mountain at its center, the ancestral mountain of the clan. Rivers, forests surround the golden fields, as we follow a small, but strong stream of the Capital River towards the House of Yoo, located by the mountain.
Built from wood, every tower is topped with the green Yoo flag. The Ancestral House is a small city in itself. We see the butchers and the bakers deliver their goods to the kitchen. We see the captain of the guard in the courtyard, admonishing a girl with sharp eyes and a Hime-style haircut that her uniform is again not up to par. The girl is not impressed.
We see a girl with a soft disposition and an even softer voice do magic at the academy practice rooms, teaching wide-eyed young students that, indeed, you can change your hair color at the snap of your fingers.
We see a large painting come alive and the tiny, color-covered artist in front of it, the cherries on her arm gleaming in the sunlight. A single stroke of paint and her painting comes to life. Butterflies emerge from it and aim for the gardens.
We see the gardeners flee the park as the large dinosaur topiary comes to life and chases them, too slow, too weak, to do any damage, and a girl apprentice frantically looking for the right spell to make the dinosaur leave. Her monolid eyes, sharp and kind, crinkle in laughter when the dinosaur topiary stopped by a group of tourists to pose for pictures.
But most important of all …
… we go into the Yoo Ancestral Home, the palace, up, up, into the main building where the rooms of the Yoo family are located. The floor is polished, a breeze makes the long, silk curtains fly that cover every entry and divide every room. We go down a long corridor to a pair of doors that are ajar, and step inside.
A bed, surrounded by dancing curtains is in the middle of the room and left to it, on the wall, is a mirror with a vanity in front of it. A girl with blue hair, wearing only pants, is about to get dressed, the pale skin of her bare back crossed by two large scars that go from her ribcage to her shoulder blades.
She shrugs on a jacket and closes the front, observing herself in the mirror. Her expression is serious, a small frown between her eyes. She straightens her uniform - and then straightens it once more, preparing herself to go to war.
In the room next door, on her large desk, the wind tugs at a document that describes the surrender of a marriage contract from one Bae Joohyun to one Im Nayeon.
She turns away from the mirror, ready to face the world.
“Just you wait, Im Nayeon!”
Cue imaginary, non-existent thunder.
end chapter 1.