Desaraelfrun should have been over the moon.
She had King Cedrych (the apparently Not So Kind and Wise) under her thumb, she had collected the fourth lost child for her plot, and she was having a good hair day.
But still, something was niggling away at her. Something in the shape of a small lump of flesh, otherwise known as Amerie.
Her eyes shifted at the memory. The last putrescent child to have been caught in her net had gone on and on about some girl called Amerie. The boy must’ve been blind as well as having no sense of direction because when he had fallen into the decoy realm she had set up, he asked Desaraelfrun whether or not she was Amerie’s sister. She, look the sister of a child-human? The insult was almost intolerable, but she had not yet gotten the boy to agree to a deal, so she had to grit her teeth and play the charade of ‘Miss Crystal’ a bit longer.
From his incessant babbling, she had gotten to know that Amerie was the little girl living in the cabin-house nearby. Of course, she was powerless in the human realm, but she had silently been watching Amerie, mentally adding her to the list of likely children that would fall into her magically manicured clutches. But much to Desaraelfrun’s chagrin, the summer months passed by without this oh-so-easy target being caught.
Still, as ‘Miss Crystal’ she had managed to use Amerie’s name to help her catch the boy that had caused such a fuss that there were now policemen around Shepherds Forest. Some ‘Jack Lumber’. Not that Desaraelfrun cared what his name was, he was just another pawn in her plans.
Desaraelfrun had innocently told Jack that she didn’t know who Amerie was, but that she knew that there were some children in the forest. She had led him to make his own conclusions that one of them must be Amerie. Immediately, his face brightened and he agreed to be taken there.
Hook, line, and sinker. The deal was cinched.
Desaraelfrun loved a bit of mind-play, but mentally manipulating children was getting so boring. It was only too easy to stay within the limits of her magic by not technically lying but tricking people to get her way.
Her scheme would soon play itself out within a week anyway. She had decided she would only get one more child. Five was a nice number and would make quite a statement. Besides, there wasn’t much room for much more anyway. She had been on the cusp of getting her fifth, when -
When she didn’t.
And no longer could.
The darkness in Desaraelfrun’s eyes deepened each time she thought about that day. Amerie had undone her, and perhaps even had the power of undoing her entire plan.
It had been a long time since anyone had rejected her. And that rejection summoned the spirits who had both given her her powers, and had placed the restrictions on it. Since the birth of her magic, Desaraelfrun had found it only too easy to dodge those conditions. The first one was that she was not allowed to lie in her deals. But a little careful phrasing made that easy to jump over. The second was much harder - nay, impossible to overcome:
“Should one reject your deal, your true heart will reveal.”
Meaning that if her deal was ever to be rejected, the magic forming her physicality would fade away and her true nature would reveal itself on her face. Since Desaraelfrun’s magic was so invested into her vanity, her soul itself would slip away back into the unseeable darkness, dragging the rest of Desaraelfrun with it.
But as none of her deals were ever rejected, the consequence if any were, had slipped out of her mind. Desaraelfrun thought she had become numb to fear, but the way her soul had shivered at ‘no’ made her realise she was not as astute as she thought.
Even though Desaraelfrun soon recovered, that was not the end of it. Ever since the incident with Amerie, Desaraelfrun found that she could no longer intercept the chink between the star realm and the human realm to create her own decoy realm. Her decoy realm looked identical to Shepherds forest, meaning none of the children would suspect a thing when she ensnared them. It had taken a long time to perfect, but she also had used her magic to create a backdoor into the star spot of Shepherds forest so she could get in without alerting the Gateway Guardian.
Maybe her magic had weakened when her soul had slipped away, but that backdoor had also shut. It would take too long for her to create another one and it would be pointless by the time it was made. Soon she would be able to trample all over the star spot of Shepherds forest, Gateway Guardian or not.
Still.
Amerie posed a threat, even if she didn’t know it. Desaraelfrun had a hunch that she was the ‘unlost’ child that the prophecy circulating the star realm had spoken of.
And if she was the child of that prophecy, she was the child of Desaraelfrun’s prophecy, the one that only Desaraelfrun and Cibil, that wretched Seeing Stone knew about.
But Desaraelfrun consoled herself. Everything had already been set in motion. There was very little the unassuming Amerie could do now. And once her plan worked, neither prophecy would matter.
Desaraelfrun’s eyes glittered with a threat to rewrite the stars.
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