33 Risen#re

"What do I want?" Anya yelled and grabbed on to Lirian pushing him against a wall, she was careful not to hurt him, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't want to hurt him a little bit.

"You know I've been with you every step of the way, from the time you landed on the Clovis home world, and I can count the number of times that I've let you escape my sense in fourteen years on a single hand," she said angrily

"I have been there to protect you and take care of you every step of the way," she said holding Lirian firmly against the wall.

"And now you are giving me the cold shoulder like I've wronged you in some way, and I don't even know what I did wrong" she yelled as droplets of tears formed in the corner of her eyes.

"Is it because you finally tasted your old power, that you are done with me and think that I'm some useless waste of space," she cried in anger, she was dangerously close to pushing Lirian straight through the wall.

Anya herself was slightly shocked by her own actions but she'd be lying if she said it didn't hurt to be treated like cold air by someone she would do almost anything for.

Lirian's mouth trembled a little as he felt her anger and heart break, "I stalled for time," Lirian said with a shaky voice.

"I stalled for so much time, waiting for you,"

"But you never came, if you did she'd still be here," Lirian said with a trembling voice, he knew that it was dumb, but he needed a way to lighten his guilt.

Had he just used his power or the geneses world from the start, Edith would have lived, there was so much self-blame and guilt inside him that he felt like it would consume him if he couldn't shift the blame elsewhere, Telamon was dead now, and the only other person he could fairly place the guilt on was Efrideet, but he had no way of taking it out on Efrideet

So, he chose the only other person he could take it out on Anya.

Lirian felt himself slide to the floor as Anya released him and took two steps back, her eyes were shaking wildly, now she had been truly hurt, it wasn't like she didn't try her best, when she found out that Lirian was in trouble she ran in a mad panic.

Fearing that she'd only find a corpse, or worse that there wouldn't even be a corpse remaining, she thought that she'd go mad with worry.

But now she was being blamed for something that wasn't even her duty, if she could have saved Edith she obviously would have, but it wasn't like Edith had anything to do with her in the first place.

"You're a spineless dog," she cursed Lirian in a quivering voice.

She took a deep breath to calm her emotions and spoke to Lirian in a cold tone, "The Eden family will be holding a funeral ceremony for Edith in a month, they sent you an invite to attend, they'll be burying her as if she were an official princess," Anya said.

Then something appeared in her hand and she tossed it to Lirian, "Alastor said that this is something you requested," she spat coldly and ran out of his room as if fleeing.

Lirian was slumped against the wall sitting there with a lifeless look to him, 'Katerina also thought that I was spineless at the end,' Lirian chuckled dryly at the irony as he grabbed onto the item Anya tossed to him.

He knew what it was, and just holding it made him relive his memories of Edith she always loved those stupid noise inducing ignition powder weapons.

A while back Alastor told him that he could find such items, they were rare and useless, but there were still people that collected them and it just so happened that he could get his hands on one that was a complete mess and needed restoring.

The restoration of such weapons was one of Edith's favourite things to do, so he intended to get it for her as a gift, but now that it was here, it only served as a reminder of his failure.

---

A long while passed before Lirian climbed back to his feet, when he got up he realised that the house had finally stopped shaking and when he had his watch tell him the time, he found out that the sun was already gone down.

He had actually sat there from earlier in the morning until the evening without even realising it.

He kicked the rifle across the floor and carried himself to the bed with the desire to forget that the day even happened but a short while later his doors opened, and his mother came in with her husband at her side.

"Dear," she said coming to Lirian and placing his head in her lap, with a bright smile on her face, Lirian couldn't see anything but he could feel her joyous mood, clearly she had been having a great day so far.

"Have you ever heard off sound barriers?" Lirian asked in a complaining tone as she ran her fingers through his hair.

Taliyah laughed happily and flashed a naughty smile at Albus, but she didn't apologise, she was the empress and he was the emperor if they didn't have the right to be as loud as they wanted to then who did.

The emperor shook his head with an amused smile, but his face quickly turned serious as he looked at Lirian, "Can you tell us what the steps showed you?" he asked getting to the point there was a lot that still needed to be discussed.

"Those seven dots, that you spoke off are planets in the mortal realm," Lirian said.

"As you all saw it was the sixth planet that lit up, that is where I need to go for my trial,"

"The world is called Nebula-6," Lirian stated openly, as soon as he said that he knew that something was wrong, the emperor had gone awfully silent and his mothers hand stilled as she rubbed his hair and she trembled slightly.

"No!," she said shaking her head, "Absolutely not, Lirian you can go to any of the worlds but you absolutely must not go to the Nebula worlds all 7 of them are pits of absolute death even more so than the others," she said vehemently.

"The dots match the number of Nebular planets," the emperor said suddenly with realisation, and he chuckled softly, "People have been trying to find out what the seven dots represent since the beginning of the great civilizations, and now it's explained just like that," he muttered with an excited voice.

Feeling his wife's angry gaze on him he sighed, "Though your mother is right, the Nebula worlds are death traps like no other," he said with a sigh.

"Mother, I know that you're worried, but I can take care of myself, even if it's one of the Nebula worlds, no matter how dangerous I'll survive," Lirian said but he frowned, because he felt how tense she was becoming.

"Lirian you don't understand," she said, "The empire has a special contract that we uphold with the gods and the Nebula worlds could be said to be special even amongst the other worlds, but we can't discuss the details about those seven worlds in particular," Taliyah was panicking as she tried to explain.

Seeing her panicking state it was clear to Albus that she wasn't going to make much sense if she spoke, so he filled Lirian in on the details.

"There are 46 worlds for you to choose from for your trial, but the empires have a rule of not revealing the Nebula worlds, because even we are completely clueless as to what happens on those seven worlds,"

"With the other 39 worlds we can send a few elites to investigate the worlds ahead of time, and we can get intel about those worlds to a degree, in fact we have a rough understanding as to why it's so difficult for candidate's to return alive from those worlds, but as for the Nebula worlds it's entirely different,"

"We have a special pact with the Nebula worlds, I can't get into details, but let's just say that we provide certain merchandise to those worlds,"

"But we are incapable of entering those worlds, we've had the greatest of elites, in some case the retired emperor's and empress's have tried to enter the worlds, and on one occasion someone managed to complete their immortal transformation as they entered the world,"

"But without fail they all die in seconds," the emperor said gravely.

"That said candidates don't die immediately on entry, but those that have entered all died within days, the longest to survive was two weeks, we believe that the world has a deadly atmosphere that prevents the candidates from surviving, and as for anyone with a cultivation that goes in, we believe that they die because they violate the rules set by the gods on those worlds," the emperor explained.