.·✧☆Stellarium☆✧·.

Chapter 4

Nova, Ghosts of the Past | 2,478 words

It's dark, I can see my arms and hands, I have a body. There’s nothing in the distance, it's all the same darkness. “Nova” There's a voice behind me and I don't recognize it, I turn to see what it is. It's a person, I can't quite make out the features as they’re wispy and smoke-like as they walk towards me. They faintly glow a sort of cyan. As their form stabilizes they’re about a foot away from me. It’s my… mom? “Mom???” I’m more surprised than anything. “I don’t have much time to tell you anything, but there’s something wrong here.” There's urgency in her voice and her arms slightly destabilize as she grabs my shoulders. “We are in the spirit realm. Someone is messing with it from the outside, not just me but everyone is going to be destroyed if something isn’t done about it.”

“What does this have to do with me though? Why not tell Serena? Could you always talk to me?” I look down at her. “I’m not supposed to be doing this, you’re the only one I could contact, and no, it's not been an option until now.” I reflexively shudder as I just now notice her neck. There's a clean line through the middle of it, it's also got the top and bottom halves sewn together but it's only doing so much. It's enough to keep her head on, but what I think is ghost blood leaks out from it. “What do I do about this??” I ask her. “Find who is doing this and get them to stop.” The words reverberate in my skull as her form wavers and I slip from her grasp through her hands and fall backwards through the darkness.

I wake up with a jolt, feeling like I just hit the ground from a 100 ft drop, heart beating wildly in my chest. I just stare up at the ceiling as I collect my thoughts. This is the first time in like 12 years I’ve even seen her. What did she mean I was the only one she could contact? I can’t manage to convince myself that my dream didn’t mean anything, but for right now I do have more present things to worry about. I got out of bed and my muscles feel slightly sore from last night, but that was to be expected. I hear the familiar knock at my door as I stretch a little, Sybyll enters the room. “Good morning Nova,” is all that's said before she goes to grab an everyday outfit for me. “I have some ideas” I say to her, my mouth moving before my brain. “About finding the sword, that is.”

“It's best to save that for the meeting today” she tells me as she lays out the clothes on my bed. “How are you feeling from last night?” “Fine, I wasn’t really hurt. I need to work on controlling my energy though.” I go to put on my outfit, and get ready for what will probably be the worst meeting of my life.

I skip breakfast, I’m not hungry, and go to the meeting room. It's just a room we started calling the meeting room because there's enough chairs for most people and an oval table. The royal advisor and Serena both eventually come in and take their seats. Sybyll is sitting on the other end beside me, and a few other people I don't normally see sit with us too. The heads of houses Carina, Canis Major, Saggita, and Canes Venatici all are in attendance today. It doesn’t exactly make me feel better that she called in the knights and forensic investigators on something like this. I don't think it really needed to be escalated, the houses don't have to be involved in my mess up. Though realistically I know that if this is the response given, my mess up is bigger than I imagined.

“So, I’m calling this meeting to order because of last night,” Serena starts. “However, this is highly confidential material and subject matter. Each of you, and I mean all of you including Nova and her lady in waiting must swear that you will not speak about this outside of the people you see in the room now.” As each of us puts our right hands up and swearing we will not discuss or else we are liable for charges of treason I look around to make sure that there aren't any kind of staff in here that could listen in. “Serena what happened at the preliminary coronation last night? We were all rushed out after that gunshot.” The head of Saggita asks. She's an older woman with wavy hair, it's mostly grayed so it's the burgundy color of her card. Serena doesn't get to answer when the man from Canis Major butts in “Apparently one of ours was hospitalized when a scrawny kid stormed the castle,” he huffs.

“One of the castle workers was a double agent for someone, they secured an invitation somehow, and took the ceremonial sword from us.” Serena has to project her voice to get through to them, hand pinching the bridge of her nose. “We know there is likely a bigger group backing this person because of what we recovered at the scene this morning” I wonder about how early she had to get the head of Canes Venatici up to do that. “And what was that?” asks C. Major. The silver bullet that missed me is rolled to the center of the table by the advisor for everyone to look at. “A nearly pure silver bullet, something that would be too expensive and difficult to get for a lone vigilante.” I reflexively sneered internally at the thing, it feels almost unnatural to even be in its presence. A collective unease went around the room. “They extracted something similar from the knight who was shot.” the head of Venatici says. Major, Saggita, and Carina share a look amongst each other that I can’t really read, but I know it's bad.

“Is there any evidence that there could be another insurrectionist plot?” The noticeably ginger man from Carina asks. It's weird to me how much he looks like Alexander, but that's unimportant. “Not right now, what we do know is that whoever is behind it, they have been collecting important magical items for some time now.” My mind starts running with that, why would they want that? What use is the sword? They probably know more than me about this, but I might be able to help solve this. “I actually fought the person stealing the sword last night,” I speak up. It feels awkward with all of their eyes on me. “He said something about it being more important than both of us, and that he wasn’t able to explain to me what it was.” I can tell they’re taking a second to mull over what I've just said. I have a feeling that this might be connected to that weird dream I had last night, but I have no proof.

“Can we track the sword? I'm sure there's somehow we can tell where it went.” I ask, not meaning to come off too eager. The table murmurs in agreement at this, “Finding the sword could mean being able to monitor whatever organization has enough power to both buy silver bullets, and get into the castle.” C. Major says. It seems they’re all less concerned about the sword, I can't blame them. A group of people, or a person who’s able to pull such a long term operation as they have is dangerous to the nation. I still feel guilt about losing it to Arthur though. We should have had better security around it, but I thought that it would be better to have most of the guards situated around the party instead of the throne room to make sure nothing really bad happened. I regret that now, but if I can manage to get it back I can redeem myself.

“Forget monitoring, we need to take them down immediately!” the woman from Saggita demands. “They shot two people with silver bullets, who knows how many more they have. Not to mention they made an attempt at Nova’s life.” Serena cuts in, “We will decide what to do later, we have to find them first. Charlie, do you know any ways to track the sword?” I guess that's the name of the person from Venatici because everyone looks at them. “Well, a magical object as powerful as that sword can be tracked, and I can plot a probable route. But, it would be easier and more accurate if I could have someone who is able to be out in the field to track it themselves.” I don't think anyone had a chance to react when I blurted out “I’ll do it,” so they didn't have a chance to recommend anyone else. Sybyll finally does something when she tugs the sleeve of my shirt, “Nova, are you sure?” She asks in a hushed voice. “I know that you want to make up for it, but don't you think that someone who is trained to do this will work better?” She asks. I understand where she’s coming from but I don’t think she gets it.

Serena has an iffy expression on her face too. This would do wonders for my image in the court, especially after last night. “I, for one, think that isn't a bad idea. You are not going alone though.” C. Major says. It seems like they all agree with that too. “I propose that one of my sons go on this trip. I have one that's been training with both Victoria and Charlie’s guilds for quite some time, he would be a good candidate for this.” I assume Victoria is the burgundy haired woman because she nodded her head at this. I cut my losses because it's better than nothing, I would have preferred to go it alone and get to take sole credit for it though. “Okay, I think we’ve come to a consensus about this. I'll follow up with you about your son” she gestures to Carina, “And your route,” she gestures towards Charlie. “I want to get this mission underway as soon as possible, tomorrow morning we are joining back up. All participants must be ready if they want to go. Meeting dismissed.” Yes! Okay! This went so much better than expected.

As me and Sybyll are leaving, Serena surprises me, “Sybyll, can you stay behind? I need to talk with you for a second.” What?? “But you can go, Nova.” Weird. As the doors close behind me, I already know I want to listen in. I press my ear against the wall but it's no use, if I hear anything at all it’s too muffled to understand. I'm not going to risk leaning into the door because I don't want to fall through into the room. Giving up I just lean on the wall and wait until they both leave. “Syb, what was that all about?” I ask. “Shhh, okay I can tell you, just not here.” Oh, secret meeting stuff. We walked back up to my room to start packing for the trip. Once we’re inside I basically jump on the subject. “What did she say to you?” I ask. “She told me I’m going with you on the trip!” This is great news, but Serena wouldn’t pull her aside just for that. “Was it just that? She pulled you into the room away from me only to tell you that?” She doesn’t have any hesitation replying, “She gave me some objectives for the mission to keep us on track, they’re not that important. I’ll tell you if it comes up on the way, okay?” She doesn’t seem to be lying, so I choose to let it go. “Okay.”

“What do you think we should bring?” I look inside my closet to realize that most of my clothes aren’t exactly practical for a variety of situations. Turns out when you don’t leave the capital, you don't need clothes like that. “We shouldn't bring anything too expensive or important. And nothing that would restrict movement.” Yeah, that's pretty reasonable. “Also, bring clothes for hot and cold weather. We might have to go buy you some that would fit the climate out there.” I picked out some things that I think would probably be useful. Most of my shirts have some sort of frill on them, so we decided to just go with a few of the least expensive ones. Also pants only, no way I’m wearing a dress. I finally decided to take my sword and scabbard, it's thin and reminiscent of a rapier rather than a sword but it’s what I'm comfortable using. “Sybyll, what are you going to bring?” I ask. “Well, I definitely have more practical clothes than you do, but I don't have any kind of weapons on me. So probably just clothes and some cash.”

“You need to have something! What if we get attacked??” She doesn’t argue about this because we were just attacked, see: last night. “I also don't have any formal weapons training though.” It's a little weird to think about not having any formal defense training but that's okay, “I think I know something that would suit you.”

And with that I’ve gifted her an arm crossbow. Minimal training needed, and has more practical use than just being a weapon. It's a bracer that's been modified to have mechanisms in place so that the bow folds out. I still have to do some training, just to make sure that she doesn’t end up shooting herself in the hand using it. Safety first and all that. It feels kind of sad to part with it, since it's one of the first weapons I learned. It would be better used here though, and would keep her (mostly) out of harm's way. If Serena personally invited her on this trip, who knows how mad she’d be if I sat idly by and let Sybyll get hurt. Not to mean I wouldn't be upset if she did, I just also don't want to be known for returning my lady in waiting & adventuring buddy back home in a coffin.

“Now that we have this sorted, we’ll be set for departing tomorrow.” She says. “I’m admittedly kind of nervous about this whole thing,” I mess with my hair while I say this “Do you think that what he said is true, that this is something super important that we’re stepping into?” She thinks for a second. “Maybe, and if it is, then we’re probably the right people to be involved.” I'm slightly reassured by this and sigh, wondering how this will all play out.