Ni'Srilan: The Desert: it never really began at all, did it ; NI'SRILAN's DEATH

She does not want her people to see this. This last stand. This final act as Queen, as The Naphtha, the protector. Because she knows that she will fail. The future’s mind is made up long before these things occur. The Element needed to die, so that those with power, those who had too much (what had Rook said? There is danger in this power) would come to realize that in their power, in those things they had, there is darkness. Hypatia had meant to be the Light, meant to show them these things…but even she could not.

She is not mighty, she never was. And as Joan of Arc burned at the stake, refusing to abandon her faith, so does Hypatia. Like Jormundger and Alkhnost just across the forests of Desrael, where Alcatraz and Kurai explode into blood for the Shards, Hypatia does the only thing she knows how. She burns the desert with her.

But her daughter comes, and Hypatia lifts her head (oh, it is agony to feel all these last emotions, to See what is occurring now) and looks into Sterling’s eyes. This is all she has left. The Oracle’s mind curls around her daughter’s, shielding it and being shielded by it, as she struggles to her feet.

This is it, and her daughter will not see Ni’Srilan burn as Solira drowned.

“Isadore.” There is no water on her breath now, nothing to calm the raging storm of loss and flames that rages inside her. But her daughter can withstand the heat, because she is Sterling’s. Hypatia lifts herself off the ground, willing not to look at the bloody remains of her familiar (there is nothing where he used to be. The Elements will not return him now to her). But her eyes are pure elemental energy and she gives into the hatred, into the revenge and anger and sadness that have threatened to overwhelm her – that have in a way – since Sterling’s death. She stands before her daughter not as a mother, not even as a Queen, but as a powerful Oracle (how many are left now?) who turns the desert sands into water and tar and heat. Hypatia’s Fire is uncontrolled as when she first had it.

“You must control it.” Kale speaks to her, as she is doused by his Water again and again and her temper flares.

“You’re like marshmallows!” Pirate squeaks in his kind-hearted way.

But she burns and burns, and even her own body begins to boil inside of her. There is nothing but heat, and she sways with the danger of collapsing, of dying with her land. As she should. She knows nothing but the desert now. Where will she go?

And through those elemental eyes, a daughter looks up at her with her Father’s eyes and calms her, begs her, to come. Hypatia stops, but the deserts continue to burn, fueled by everything she has lost, is losing, as it turns into black liquid. It will combust soon, as Naphtha is known to do, and never again with Ni’Srilan will be found. It began with Hypatia and Fei, and it ends with Hypatia.

”Come.”

“Run.” Her voice is charred, hard, like rock on glass. “Run, Isadore.”

As night falls, Ni’Srilan burns the skies as bright as Apollo crashing to earth. Somewhere, a small lion cub attempts to roar.