Read Novel Full Chapter 1614 Lilyanna...
Chapter 1614 Lilyanna...
Quinlan stared at the small vessel.
The drops inside it shimmered with a warmth that had no place in this cold mausoleum, a soft golden light pulsing against the glass as though breathing. His mother's tears. Sealed in a vial that had outlived continents.
His mind turned backward.
'A dungeon,' he thought. 'A monster guarding it.'
That was the picture Lilyanna had painted for Luminara. Her daughter slain in some terrible place by a beast that now hoarded the elixir in its lair. A creature waiting to be put to the sword by someone worthy of the artifact's recovery.
None of it had been a clean lie, but... The "dungeon" was a love-built tomb. The "monster" was a widower who had cherished Mirethiel past her final breath. The "killing" had been Mirethiel refusing to leave him, choosing the cold marble of this sanctuary over any warm forest her friends and family could have welcomed her into.
Lilyanna had taken a love story and dressed it up as a problem.
'That naive little hypocrite...'
When this matter was concluded, the Goddess and he were going to have a very long conversation about the importance of accuracy. Luminara was probably going to join him in berating the Goddess, he thought.
A purr unspooled in his soul.
<So virginal in her sensibilities~ Perhaps you ought to take her, my adorable Ruin. Show her what womanhood actually contains. I do believe she is overdue for a proper education, because this cannot stand.>
Nyxara and Luminara at best had a hostile relationship, their mindsets completely incompatible with one another, and even she found this unacceptable… That told Quinlan all he needed to know.
He ignored her and looked up at the man on the throne.
"You want me to drink it?"
The Archduke's red eyes settled on the vessel cradled in his shriveled palm. They lingered there a moment, then lifted to Quinlan's helm.
"Allow me first to render the matter plain, lest I be accused once more of speaking in riddles."
"…"
A dry breath that drew no air worth speaking of passed through his throat.
"This vessel was entrusted to my late wife. My Mirethiel..." A faint, dry sound came. "She was a delightfully scattered creature. A drifter of mind, easily carried by the winds of her own curiosity. So precious a memento, and yet it slipped from her thoughts for centuries upon centuries. Only as death began at last to creep toward her did she recall that the vessel had ever been placed into her keeping."
His withered hands closed gently around the artifact.
"She pressed it into my palm and bade me find a rightful heir. One who might carry her mother's legacy onward when she herself could not. Such was the dying request that bound me thereafter."
A pause.
"At least... such was the tale she offered."
His voice softened.
"I have long suspected that a kindlier motive lay beneath the framing. I believe my Mirethiel meant to bequeath to me a new wife. A descendant of her mother's blood whom I might come to love when she herself was gone." A faint, dry laugh. "A tender thought, in her way. A foolish one as well. My Mirethiel could be replaced no better than the sun might be replaced by a candle. Yet she tried, in her parting, to give me what she could."
He fell quiet.
Then he straightened.
"I tried to find an heir worthy of the tears. The other direct daughters of the First Elf had perished by then. I sought among the closer kin. None proved pure enough for the elixir to manifest as it was meant to. Time crept onward and the bloodlines thinned further still. Even the most promising descendants drew nothing from a drop save the faintest stirring of warmth. They could not be labeled proper heirs of the artifact."
His fingers tightened on the armrest.
"After a few generations, it became evident to me that I had been searching the wrong race entirely. No elf living would suffice. I came to believe that the tears demanded a primordial." His hands curled into themselves. "Yet by that age, the primordials had withdrawn from Thalorind. I had failed her. Mirethiel's dying wish would lie forever unfulfilled."
His voice dropped.
"And so I sat."
Silence held around him.
"The years gave way to centuries. The centuries to ages. The ages to..." A skeletal gesture at his own desiccated form, at the throne, at the cobwebbed candelabras and the dust that had settled across the marble. "...this. Such was my penance for failing her."
He paused.
"Yet not so long ago, by my reckoning, a thought visited me. Perhaps enough time had passed that the world might at last bring forth a miracle. Perhaps a primordial walked the soil of Thalorind once more, drawn by some current I could not perceive. A foolish hope, I told myself. Yet I cast my lure into the abyss regardless."
The red gaze settled on Quinlan.
"It would seem the foolish hope was not foolish at all."
A wet sound came from the elders.
The elders wept openly. Even Isveth had raised her hand to wipe her eyes and forgotten the gesture partway through.
The fury they had carried into this chamber drained out with the telling.
What remained was a story too sad to hold. The final true daughter of the First Elf, her bloodline thinning toward extinction, choosing to spend her last years in the arms of the lonely creature who had loved her. And the creature waiting after she was gone, century upon century, trying to honor the kindness she had given him in her parting.
The Archduke regarded Quinlan a long moment before he spoke again.
"I find myself curious, Primordial. What manner of being are you, precisely? Your form is human, yet the resonance is more than that. An abyssal lineage, perhaps? A demonic strain woven through mortal flesh?" The red gaze narrowed in scrutiny. "I confess your exact kind eludes the categories of my knowledge."
Quinlan exhaled.
"It's a long story, old man. The short version is that I'm a human primordial who might've conquered a succubus primordial."
The Archduke's eyes widened.
For a long moment, the corpse on the throne simply stared.
"...The Terror of the Flesh. The Devourer of Kings and Queens."
<Don't listen to this! Tell him to stop!> Nyxara yelped suddenly. <Close your ears!!>
<Kings and Queens?>
<…Corrupting innocent girls who never even touched themselves was a hobby I greatly enjoyed back in my youth. Now stop judging! And most importantly, stop listening!>
Quinlan wasn't such a rude person as to interrupt someone who was already speaking, thus he listened intently.
"The greediest creature ever to draw breath, who counts mortal men and women as a merchant counts coin and has never once tasted the meaning of enough." His withered jaw worked once. "The Primordial Demon of Lust, Nyxara."
The red gaze swept down over his armored frame.
"Yet how could this be, Primordial? She should be far stronger…"
Quinlan's brow twitched beneath the helm.
"It was a unique battle."
"...I see."
The Archduke did not press. Whatever calculations passed behind those red eyes remained behind them.
Quinlan let his shoulders settle.
"You've found the primordial you were looking for. Your gamble wouldn't have worked on probably any other, but... Guess we're both lucky." He extended a gauntleted hand.
"May I?"