A Salamander, but Mighty

POV: Dyenna

She was gripping the reins of her hoquin as she and her brother were traveling through the vast uncultivated fields surrounding her family's summer mansion. Even though spring had just begun, she had placed great pressure on her parents to let her go and relax for a period of a month away from the life of the castle and the political intrigues that continued to happen in the shadow of the throne.

She was not alone, her older brother had also come with her - who had insisted on being able to go away with his sister, to protect her from the monsters, but also because he adored her - Wilfrod, he was three years older than her, the first of three sons and the legitimate successor to the kingdom of Heliolite.

Heliolite was the largest kingdoms among those located on the eastern side of the continent, so large that it could be considered the remnant of the ancient empire; the kingdom of Topaz and Adularia constituted its northern borders while to the west lay a high mountain range that was almost insurmountable even for monsters. To the south there were three other kingdoms: Rhodolite extended over a long peninsula, Morganite was a border kingdom, with the western regions rising on the border with the varied cultures and civilizations of the west.

Only the kingdom of Chrysolytus was located on a remote group of islands. Of all the eastern kingdoms it was the smallest, but thanks to its mountainous and fragmented nature, it was the only one of all the eastern kingdoms to have never fallen under the yoke of a foreign force.

“It's so calm here, sister,” Wilfrod said with a broad smile. He was a splendid man, in his mid twenties. He had short light brown hair and green eyes, just like his sister's, "you could get used to being so far away from all those nobles who fight each other, looking for our father's sympathy."

“That's why I love it. Here you can live in serenity, without thinking about the weight of the crown and away from prying eyes,” she replied, giggling happily, her long oak-light hair swaying in the wind.

"And you can't imagine how pleased I am that you insisted, so I had the excuse to leave too," he said, huffing annoyedly, "I hate to think that one day I won't be able to escape from all those responsibilities."

She nodded a few times, “unfortunately that's the case, for this very reason I thought I'd take you to a secret place, now that you still have a lot of time.”

“A secret place?” Wilfrod asked with a frown.

“I found it the last time I came here,” she said, urging her hoquin to walk slightly faster than his brother's.

“Ah! Dyenna the Explorer's latest discovery?” Wilfrod teased.

“Don't call me with that moniker…” Dyenna muttered, puffing out her pretty rosy cheeks, “you know I don't like it!”

He laughed amusedly.

"Come on let's go. It's not that far from here,” she said with a smile, inviting him to follow.

Together, brother and sister continued, encouraging their hoquins to run, darting nimbly through an area covered in greenery and nature. Usually doing something like this was dangerous since you never knew if you were running straight towards some monster, an unknown dungeon or a newborn one, but the areas around the nobles' homes were periodically patrolled to keep most of the monsters away, keeping them all away was impossible, especially the most dangerous ones.

The girl accompanied him to a centuries-old tree that was in the center of a clearing that almost seemed to have been dug and cared for by the hand of a divinity: even the stones seemed to be positioned according to an aesthetic sense and the large tree in the center of the clearing had a a broad snow-white trunk, whose red three-pointed leaves made the tree appear as if it were a gigantic, cold flame pointing towards the sky.

“What the…” Wilfrod was stunned, “where did this clearing come from? I had never seen this tree..."

“I don't know,” Dyenna murmured as she climbed down from her hoquin, “I found this clearing while riding through the area, and I've been here every chance I can since.” The girl clasped her hands behind her back and started walking casually near the tree.

“If I'm not mistaken these are trees that grow in the west, beyond the Cloudbreaker Mountains,” Wilfrod murmured thoughtfully, “who knows how it got here.”

Dyenna closed the distance between the tree and her brother, who in the meantime had come almost to face the massive white trunk, "maybe it's a miracle, or maybe..." she smiled, "a divine sign."

At those last words, the tree trembled, as if it had woken up from a centuries-old torpor; one of the branches moved as quickly as a flesh arm would.

“Wilfrod! Watch out!" Dyenna shouted, her eyes widening and her hands covering her mouth.

The poor young man didn't have time to react appropriately: he drew his sword and tried to move back to distance himself from his attacker, but all he managed to achieve in that short period of time was to deflect only so slightly the branch which had reached his torso like a spear, causing him to be mortally wounded instead of killed instantly.

“WILFROD!” Dyenna exclaimed, falling to her knees next to him just as he collapsed to the ground, “oh no… oh no…”

“R-run…” Wilfrod whispered, but Dyenna didn't answer him and took one of his large, strong hands in hers, her green eyes full of tears, “you need to get away from it…”

However, the tree did not attack Dyenna: once it had pierced the young prince to death, the white tree returned to its original position, leaving the girl to mourn her brother without being in any danger.

Wilfrod tried to say something as his sister's tears fell on his face but his last breath was snatched away by death and an instant later Dyenna found herself clutching the hands of a warm corpse.

“He's dead,” said a voice that seemed to come from the tree and the entire clearing at the same time, a dark, apathetic voice.

"Good," the girl replied, stopping sobbing. She passed a hand over her eyes and released her brother's hands.

“Why you put up this scene?”

Dyenna shrugged, "I didn't have any enmity for him, my brother..." she whispered, lowering her voice and caressing his short, neat hair, "...he was simply in my way, there was no need for him to die knowing that I had stabbed him in the back.”

“You are too soft,” the voice observed, “you are destined for greatness and to go down in history as the one who rebuilt the ancient Heliolite Empire, you have no need for tenderness.”

“Give me what you promised,” Dyenna cut in, “I have done what was requested, now, grant me the Second Awakening.”

“Not so soon. Don't you think anyone would find it suspicious that you got the Second Awakening just when your brother died on a peaceful ride away from any witnesses?”

Dyenna clenched her jaw, saying through gritted teeth, “damn, you're right.” The girl's eyes went from the tree to her brother's body, "okay, then I have to retrieve my brother's body, I will return to the summer estate and send the message from there."

“Yes, that's the right thing,” finally the voice took the form of a dark, humanoid shape, perhaps male judging by the width of the shoulders and torso. There were no other details as the lower part of its body had no shape and its silhouette was nothing more than a swirl of clouds black as obsidian and white as snow, "for now I will passively follow you."

Dyenna smiled slightly, “will you just follow me?”

“Gods shouldn't interact too directly with mortals, conventional wisdom is that they shouldn't do so at all,” the creature of shifting black and white clouds explained, “just know that your rise to power is inevitable at this point.”

“That's what I wanted to hear!”

The mysterious creature vanished again just as it had appeared, a few moments later reality seemed to bend around the entire clearing and the tree, crumpling and twisting like a piece of paper before being thrown away. The forest returned exactly as it was before that tree appeared, the hoquins had remained nearby, and so had Wilfrod's lifeless body.

Now, there was no way that a normal girl would have the strength to load the body of an adult male onto a creature the size of a horse, but Dyenna not only had a elite Class, but having been able to benefit from the benefits and rights alone of the nobles, she had already passed the thirtieth level even though she was barely past twenty. She lifted Wilfrod's body onto one of the hoquins, whose bridle she then took.

The first piece of the domino had received the push, now she just had to wait for the next ones to fall. She climbed onto her hoquin and let out a deep sigh, “Rosalia will be devastated when the news reaches her,” she said to her brother's corpse, urging the two hoquins to begin walking.