Thranduil stomped into the royal guest quarters, slamming the heavy mahogany door so hard it rattled violently on its brass hinges. Gritting his teeth, he ripped off his tailored travel vest and hurled it at the nearest armchair. The wooden seat rocked precariously from the sheer, unchecked fury behind the throw.
The chamber was sprawling and cavernous, draped in the opulent, nature-infused architecture of the Beast Kingdom, yet it remained largely empty. Queen Veronica had been exceptionally gracious with her hospitality, though the vanguard party hadn't actually seen her since they ran out on her royal welcoming to hunt down Dan. Of course, she's a ruling monarch, Thranduil reasoned bitterly, she must be buried under an avalanche of state affairs.
With a tight, jagged flick of his wrist, Thranduil cast a silent warding spell, snapping a glowing barrier across the threshold to seal the door shut. He stripped off his damp undershirt and reached into his sleeve, tearing open a small pocket dimension. A dozen ancient, leather-bound tomes tumbled out onto his desk. He desperately needed to drown out the echoes of Dan's absolute madness, planning to immerse his mind in dense, complex theorems and leave his former leader to whatever suicidal fate he chose.
He retreated into the adjoining washroom, sinking into the steaming water. After thoroughly scrubbing the grit from his face and tying his damp, pale blue hair back into a tight knot, he draped a towel around his waist and stepped back into the bedroom.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his breath hitching.
"Potions?" Cyra muttered with mild, detached interest.
She was sitting directly in the center of his neatly made bed, her legs crossed comfortably under her. Her massive, gloved hands were casually turning the pages of one of his most prized arcane manuscripts.
"It's strange," she continued, tilting her head to the side as her sharp brown eyes locked onto him. Her triangular wolfish ears twitched playfully atop her head. "We all use mana. I mean, I can certainly conjure and hurl a devastating fireball if I feel like it, but that doesn't automatically make me a mage. It's always been so incredibly hard to spot the actual line between people like me and an academic like you. What exactly makes our powers so fundamentally different?"
"How on earth did you get in here?" Thranduil asked slowly, his voice dropping into a tense whisper as he began walking toward her.
"Well, you left the balcony window wide open," Cyra pointed out airily. She tossed the book aside, stretching her arms above her head before collapsing backward to lay flat across his sheets.
As she settled, the legendary, divine sword strapped to her back seamlessly slipped straight through the physical fabric of the mattress and the wooden frame beneath it. The weapon was a paradox—unable to interact with the physical world unless she actively willed herself to wield it in battle. It phased harmlessly through walls, chairs, and beds as she moved, sat, or lay down; otherwise, the massive, unyielding blade would constantly smash into every piece of furniture in her vicinity, since it was permanently bound to her soul and could never be taken off.
"But this floor is over forty stories—well, never mind," Thranduil sighed heavily, cutting himself off. He remembered bitterly that leaping over a forty-story chasm or scaling a sheer golden citadel wall was nothing more than light, effortless play for a high-tier beastkin like her. "So, what exactly do you want, Cyra? Come to aggressively lecture me on Dan's behalf?"
He grunted, turning his back to her to reach for a clean shirt resting on the desk.
But Cyra moved like a striking serpent.
Before his elfish ears could even register the shift in the wind, she erupted from the bed. Thranduil's instincts flared, a shimmering magical barrier instantly snapping into existence around his bare chest. Cyra didn't even slow down. Her fist punched clean through the defense, shattering his protective spell like brittle clay.
Her gloved hand clamped around his shoulder, her clawed fingers locking in. With a single, terrifying burst of her natural, predatory strength, she hoisted the tall mage completely off his feet with one hand and slammed him brutally against the golden stone wall.
The entire room shuddered. The glass windowpanes rattled precariously from the impact.
Before Thranduil could even gather the breath to cast an incantation, Cyra's second hand slapped firmly over his lips, sealing his mouth shut. She leaned in close, pinning the completely helpless, shirtless elf flush against the stone wall. Her heavy, bushy brown tail lashed restlessly against the floorboards behind her.
Thranduil stared down at her in absolute, wide-eyed confusion, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs as he found himself completely trapped beneath her gaze.
"I am entirely done playing games with you, Thranduil," she muttered, her voice dropping into a cool, dangerous purr that vibrated directly against his skin. Her brown eyes narrowed with a sudden, suffocating intensity. "Maybe I should just take complete advantage of you right here and now... while you're completely defenseless and unable to run."
"You have a really fine face, elf," Cyra whispered slowly, her hot breath fanning across his skin. "A really nice smell, too."
Thranduil's entire body tensed, the muscles in his back locking up hard against the cold stone as her heavy, furry wolf tail snaked around his waist, brushing deliberately against his hip. "Sorry, but after seeing you shirtless like this... I don't think I can help myself any longer."
She leaned in closer, bringing her face directly to the crook of his neck. Her lips parted, her sharp canines catching the dim light of the room. Thranduil squeezed his eyes shut, his heart hammering like a trapped bird against his ribs, bracing for a bite. But the sudden strike he expected never came. Slowly opening his eyes, he found Cyra staring back at him, her gaze icy, focused, and unyielding.
"As a beastkin, it's deep in our biological nature to make what's ours submit. I'm entirely certain you know that very well," she said, her voice dropping into a low, predatory cadence. "I've been trying to play the long game with you for months, Thranduil, but you just wouldn't budge an inch. I've tried to be timid around you to the absolute best of my abilities. I've tried to hold myself back, but it's clearly not working. So, it got me thinking... maybe I should just take the reigns by force."
She let out a soft sigh, her brown eyes drifting downward to track the line of his torso, settling on the floorboards just below his tucked towel. "Of course, I've never actually done this before, but by nature... I feel like I know exactly what to do."
She snapped her gaze back up, locking onto his panicked eyes. "Blink if you understand exactly what I'm getting at."
The completely flustered, crimson-faced mage began blinking frantically, his mind racing.
"You know what? Never mind," Cyra growled, her ears pinning back in aggravation. "You're driving me absolutely mad, you know that? I know there are countless muscular, hot dudes out there in the world—strong warriors and legendary chieftains—but why you? Why did I have to fall so hard for a spineless, academic bastard like you?"
A sudden flash of primal white light flickered across her eyes, her beastkin instincts flaring. "You're lean. No massive muscle mass. No extraordinary physical stats. Absolutely zero warrior instincts. All you have going for you is that ridiculous face of yours. Of course, you'd be a walking red flag to any other beastkin woman, since we naturally judge based on physical dominance. But somehow... you managed to completely captivate me." She bit her lower lip bitterly, her tail lashing against the stone.
"Of course, a massive part of me just wants to hurl you onto that bed over there and make love to you for the rest of the day," she muttered, her grip tightening on his shoulders. "But due to the massive differences in our cultures, it wouldn't be right, and I know it. I absolutely hate this, Thranduil. But I must receive at least a little compensation for the sheer amount of restraint I am putting myself through right now. I can't just let you go that easily."
Before Thranduil could even form a syllable to protest, Cyra abruptly ripped her hand away from his mouth. In the same fluid motion, she lunged forward and planted her face directly onto his.
She locked him into a fierce, breathless kiss that seemed to drag on forever. Her hands pinned him hard against the wall, stealing the air straight from his lungs. When she finally broke away, a thin trail of saliva connected their lips in the space between them.
Cyra let go of his shoulders and stepped back. Deprived of her support, Thranduil's knees buckled. He slid down the golden stone wall, collapsing onto the floorboards in a weak heap. He instantly clamped a trembling hand over his bruised, tingling mouth, his entire face turning a brilliant, violent shade of serious red.
Cyra stood over him, looking down at the disheveled mage with a wildly unhinged, triumphant smile stretching across her face.
"Other beastkin women might crave big, strong men... but I think I vastly prefer delicate people like you, Thranduil," she said sweetly. Then, her expression flattened, her voice taking on a dangerously serious, absolute tone. "If you don't start shaking things up between us, I'll give you exactly one month. I'll take the reigns permanently from then on."
She spun around, her long sleeveless jacket flowing behind her as she walked back over to his bed. Slumping down onto the mattress, she crossed her legs and looked at him expectantly, as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.
"Now, enough of all this," Cyra said firmly, her tone completely switching back to business. "Start telling me exactly what you and Dan were whispering about out there."
Thranduil stared fixedly at the polished wood of the floorboards, utterly paralyzed, his limbs refusing to obey his commands. He forced himself to gather a shred of composure, pulling up the courage to tilt his head and look back up at her, but the moment his icy blue eyes brushed against her intense gaze, he snapped his head right back down. His heart was violently beating like a war drum, performing wild, frantic acrobatics inside his chest.
"When I was a mere child... I was deeply, completely fascinated with the arcane arts," he began, his voice trembling slightly.
"Is this an actual, unprompted tragic backstory?" Cyra muttered with a sigh, awkwardly scratching the base of her left wolf ear. "Because I definitely didn't ask for all that, you know."
"Do you have any conceptual understanding of what the Tower of Devbatuhç actually is?" Thranduil asked slowly, his tone dropping into a grave, deliberate cadence.
Cyra paused, her brown eyes tracking the ceiling patterns as she pondered for a long moment. Finally, she shook her head, her short hair shifting against her neck. "I feel like I might have briefly run across the name during my mandatory royal studies back in the day, but it honestly doesn't ring any particular bells right now."
"Then shut up and just let me talk!" Thranduil roared, his pent-up frustration and embarrassment finally exploding.
"But I don't want to listen to a bunch of sad, melodramatic tales about your past or what you did when you were a little kid!" Cyra retorted sharply, pushing herself off the mattress.
She stepped forward, and for a fleeting moment, the two of them locked eyes in a tense, silent standoff. Thranduil felt the suffocating, lingering effects of her romantic assault lift from his mind, replaced by raw defiance—but the bravado quickly evaporated under her sheer physical presence. He backed down, his gaze dropping to lock onto the polished leather of her riding boots.
"It's... it's just how we elves do things," he said softly, his voice dropping into a quiet, vulnerable murmur. "If you are truly... planning on dating someone, you fundamentally have to learn about their past. And besides, I can't properly discuss the reality of that tower if I don't first tell you how I came to learn about its existence in the first place. It is the exact, core reason why I was turned into a stone statue to begin with."
Thranduil spoke softly, closing his eyes tightly as he braced himself for another sharp, snarky remark from the hot-tempered princess. But when the silence stretched on, he cautiously opened them and looked up.
Cyra was staring back at him, her entire demeanor shifted. She had quietly taken her seat back in the center of the bed. Her large, furry wolfish ears were perked up attentively, leaning forward to catch his words, while her bushy brown tail brushed against the fine sheets with a slow, soothing rhythm. The crisp afternoon air drifted through the wide-open balcony window, catching the stray locks of her hair. The radiant sunlight flooded the room, illuminating the rich, golden-brown hues of her hair and coat, casting a warm, almost ethereal halo around her athletic frame.
"Well... you honestly could have just started with that," Cyra huffed softly, her boyish pout softening. She leaned forward, resting her chin snugly on her clenched hands, her large gloves framing her face. "Well then, go on. You officially have my completely undivided attention."
"Stunning," Thranduil muttered under his breath, the word slipping past his lips before his mind could stop it.
"Uh? What exactly is stunning?" Cyra asked curiously, tilting her head as her ears twitched.
Crap. I completely forgot she possesses supernatural beastkin hearing, Thranduil thought in a sudden panic, his face instantly retaining its brilliant, dark crimson texture. He cleared his throat loudly, trying to mask his utter embarrassment as he adjusted his posture against the wall.
"Well... as I was saying, when I was a kid, I was quite fascinated by magic," he continued quickly, deliberately ignoring her question as he dove back into his history, the warmth of the afternoon sun enveloping the quiet room.
"Of course, we elves always pride ourselves on our innate mastery over magic," Thranduil continued, his voice smoothing out as the memories began to anchor his racing heart. He leaned back against the stone wall, his gaze drifting past Cyra and out toward the sun-drenched canopy of the beastkin forest. "We barely ever venture into utilizing swords and shields. We possess them for military tradition, of course, but you will rarely, if ever, see an elf actually swinging one in earnest. They are purely for show. My father, the king—Asil de von—was not at all what you would typically expect from a dignified elven monarch. He was, let's just say... exceptionally extreme when it came to his pursuit of women."
Cyra didn't interrupt, but her bushy tail swished once against the sheets, her dark eyes locked onto his face, soaking in the rare vulnerability.
"As a direct result of his impulses, I had multiple brothers. Quite a massive lot of them, actually," Thranduil said, a bitter, self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "My father would recklessly sleep around the continent, producing royal infants all over the known world. It was profoundly bizarre, but I don't think he ever possessed the capacity to change that fundamental aspect of himself. I was merely one of the lesser princes of the realm, born to a noble elven lady. Because of my low standing in the line of succession, I was blessed with an abundance of free time. I spent almost all my days with my mother in our secluded estate. Like me, she possessed this exact shade of pale, water-like blue hair. Our lineage's strongest elemental affinity, as you can easily deduce by my appearance, is water."
He took a slow, deep breath, the phantom scent of old parchment and fresh springs lingering in his mind.
"I rarely ever saw my father—or, perhaps I should just formally call him the king. On the rare occasions that I did cross paths with him, he never even bothered to cast a single glance in my direction. He would walk straight past me, heading directly for my mother's quarters. We elves are naturally quite mature and detached about these sorts of domestic arrangements, so whenever his royal carriage was spotted outside, I would instantly leave the estate. I spent those hours buried in the grand archives, or out in the wilderness exploring the borders."
The afternoon wind from the open window grew a fraction cooler, rustling Thranduil's tied-back hair.
"Back then, I was barely fifteen years old, small and frail, standing little over two feet tall. I had two incredibly close friends named Mina and Kale. We would spend hours practicing our elemental manipulation out in the meadows, weaving water into intricate shapes, and it was genuinely fun for a long time. Until the day my mother suddenly took deeply, terribly ill. I abandoned my studies entirely to stay by her bedside, nursing her through the fever. But for some utterly annoying, inexplicable reason, the king kept aggressively returning to our estate. He wouldn't leave her in peace. After weeks of watching her suffer while he barged into our home, something inside me permanently snapped."
Thranduil's fists clenched tightly at his sides, his knuckles turning pale as the raw, buried anger seeped back into his voice.
"I roared furiously at the man. I screamed at the literal king of the elves to leave my dying mother alone. Man... did I get the absolute beating of my life by his royal guards for that insolence. They broke my bones right there on the floorboards. But, surprisingly, after that violent day, the king never set foot in our estate again. Sadly, though... my mother didn't last much longer after that. She passed away in the quiet of the spring, and from that moment on, I grew a profound, venomous hatred for the king."
"I poured my entire mindset into the study of magic after that," Thranduil continued, his voice dropping into a rhythmic, academic hum as he leaned his head back against the stone wall. "I tried reading all and everything there is to know about the arcane. Of course, the books I had at home were terribly limited. My mom's family completely refused to have anything to do with me after she passed. I wasn't bitter about it, though. To me, it meant I was practically free, and it guaranteed that I wouldn't be dragged into any messy royal political stuff. I originally tried learning high-tier magic for one sole purpose: so I could eventually kill the king. But my focus permanently shifted the day I came across the Book of Arzothroth."
Cyra's ears perked up even higher at the name, her brown tail stopping its slow sway as she leaned forward, completely gripped by his words.
"It was an ancient, weathered book buried deep near the flower patch in our garden," Thranduil murmured, his icy blue eyes narrowing as he recalled the memory. "I was practicing and experimenting on new, unorthodox ways to manipulate earth magic when my spade suddenly struck the iron-bound spine of the tome. I instantly knew why it had been buried and hidden away from the world. It eluded to and vividly described dark, primordial magic that I had never seen before in any royal archive. It described the ancient wonders of the world, the Seven Artifacts of Creation, and gods that have long been completely gone from this realm."
Thranduil paused. His gaze slowly drifted away from the window, tracking across the sheets until his eyes locked firmly onto the massive, ethereal sword strapped to Cyra's back.
"That blade you have there is one of those seven Artifacts of Creation," Thranduil muttered, pointing a slender finger toward the phased weapon. "I highly doubt you've noticed it, but Areia possesses one of the artifacts too. Those straight, rigid tattoos that run across both her arms down to her wrists? Those are the permanent marks of the blade. Though, to be fair, I don't think she actually knows how to properly use it or summon the weapon at will yet."
Thranduil looked up, meeting Cyra's gaze. He noticed she was taking in every single word he said, her expression entirely serious, hanging on his every breath. A soft, genuine smile tugged at his lips before he quickly cleared his throat and continued.
"Among the ancient, decaying pages of that book, I first came across the legend of the Tower of Devbatuhç. The crucial pages concerning its location and structure had been violently torn away from the binding, but with a little advanced chronomancy and some intricate reverting potions, I managed to piece together quite a lot of information from that book."
His eyes narrowed slightly, the sunlight casting long shadows across his bare chest.
"According to the text written in the book, climbing the tower and successfully completing its grueling challenges would grant the climber unimaginable, god-like power. Even though it explicitly stated the power would only be temporary... it grants absolute dominion over life and death itself. The moment I decoded those words, it struck me like a lightning bolt. If I could somehow obtain the primordial key to this tower, I could easily get the raw power I needed to kill the king... and I could also finally bring my mother back from the dead."
Thranduil spoke gravely, the heavy confession hanging in the quiet, sunlit room like lead.
"Of course, I should have noticed the warning signs much sooner, but I was so entirely consumed by the desperate desire to bring my mother back that I blindly ignored everything," Thranduil said, his voice dropping into a quiet, hollow whisper. He pulled his knees up slightly, resting his arms against them as he stared out the window. "Everything was just going too smoothly. It was as if a path had been deliberately laid out for me, as if someone—or something—viciously wanted me to find that Tower. I managed to obtain the primordial key surprisingly fast, even though the book explicitly warned that everyone who had ever attempted to climb the tower had been permanently swallowed by the abyss."
He shifted slightly, his bare back sliding against the stone wall.
"It made me deeply wonder who the original owner of that book truly was. If it had belonged to my mother, or someone else who lived in that estate before us, how did they manage to survive possessing it? Well... I didn't ponder it for very long back then. I had no idea if they were actually trying to reach the tower like I was, or if they were simply after the other dark secrets hidden within the pages. All I knew was that I was absolutely determined to find it."
Cyra sat completely still on the mattress, her chin still resting on her hands, her tail tracing a slow, rhythmic pattern against the sheets as she listened to the rhythm of his story.
"I abandoned the elven kingdom entirely," Thranduil continued, his jaw tightening. "I followed the microscopic clues left behind in the margins of the text. I crossed jagged mountain ranges, completely traversed foreign planes, and—though I couldn't do it nearly as effortlessly as Antrea or sustain the pressure for very long—I even forcefully breached dimensional barriers. But eventually, I found the anchor point after 10 years. And to my absolute, greatest surprise, it was entirely mundane, extremely boring, and located right near the borders of the elven kingdom itself. I should have realized the trap right then and there... but I didn't."
He let out a ragged breath, the sunlight catching the sharp angles of his face.
"The gate leading to the actual dimension of the tower was a single, solitary peach tree situated across the northern peaks. It stood completely alone at the absolute summit. Only the true wielder of the key could ever activate it; to anyone else, it looked like every other ordinary tree in the mountains, with absolutely nothing supernatural about it. The moment I held the key to the bark, the space fractured. I was violently sucked into the void."
Thranduil paused, a visible shiver running down his spine as the ancient dread resurfaced in his eyes.
"Immediately, I found myself standing in a void between heaven and earth. And right there, towering into the infinite sky, was a rugged, monolithic structure. It was made entirely of the calcified, frozen bodies of cruel and twisted people—monsters who had committed unimaginable evils throughout history, or desperate fools who had tried to climb the tower and failed. They were fused together to form the very walls. I couldn't mistake it for anything else. It was a monument of immense, suffocating power that literally made me want to pee my pants right then and there."
He glanced over at Cyra. The fierce wolf princess didn't tease him; she simply gave him a solemn, quiet nod, silently urging him to keep going.
"I moved forward with shaky, trembling steps until I was standing directly before the massive gate of the Tower," Thranduil whispered, his eyes closing as he entered the darkest part of his memory. "I can't even fully remember what the grotesque stone head carved into the door demanded of me... but the moment I stepped forward and inserted the key into the lock... everything turned into pure, unadulterated hell."
Thranduil paused, the heavy silence settling into the room once more. The sun outside had dipped lower, casting long, amber shadows across the floorboards. After a long minute where it seemed like the tale had spun to its absolute end, Cyra slowly lifted her head from her hands.
"You don't actually remember a single thing you saw inside that Tower, do you?" Cyra asked, her voice unexpectedly soft, devoid of its usual sharp edge.
"No, I don't," Thranduil muttered, his shoulders dropping as he leaned heavily against the stone wall. "My memories of the interior are completely blank. But... I do know one thing for certain. The primordial entities dwelling within that plane are desperately trying to cross over into our world. I simply wasn't the specific vessel they were looking for."
He rubbed his temples, his fingers tracking the pale blue lines of his hair. "I can't remember what those things did to me in the dark, or exactly how long I was trapped in their grasp. But I am never going back there, Cyra. Not even if it meant saving the entire world from ruin. When I finally woke up, I was back on the dirt of the mountain peaks. I literally clawed my way back down the rocky slopes to my home. Physically, I was completely unhurt, but my brain was in absolute shambles. I had been stripped temporarily of my magic, my mana veins entirely burnt out."
He let out a hollow, self-deprecating chuckle, the crimson tint returning slightly to his ears. "I dragged myself into my estate, sat down in the dark, and frantically grabbed the very first book my hand brushed against on the shelf just to ground my mind. It was... a ridiculous guide to dating. I'm entirely certain it was at that exact moment, book in hand, that my father's sealing spell triggered."
Thranduil closed his eyes, piecing together the fragmented timeline. "Though, to be honest, I'm still not entirely sure how the king came to know what I was doing. Perhaps his spymasters simply caught me experimenting with forbidden dark magic and he sealed me away as punishment. The Book of Arzothroth and the primordial key... they were both left behind, swallowed by that hellish realm."
He opened his eyes, looking directly into Cyra's attentive brown ones.
"I know the story is a bit messy, Cyra. It happened so many years ago that my mind might have mixed up the sequence of events," Thranduil said, his expression hardening into one of absolute, unyielding seriousness. "But one singular truth remains through the fog. Dan is undoubtedly powerful—probably the strongest youngster this world has ever recorded in its entire history. But even with all his monstrous strength... I highly doubt Dan would ever make it out alive if he steps foot inside that place."