12: Phantasia’s Power
She took one last look back, but the shadows had given up the chase. They were safe at last, and their skirmish along the border between the Innerworld and the Underworld was over. Above them, hazy and far away, the continents of the faerie world drifted around the concave aether.
“It seems it was worth the effort,” he said as he turned the splinter over in his hand. To Phantasia it was just a vermilion gem, but she knew Dionysus could see more than that. He was the prince of the Water faeries, after all.
“Will it help?” she asked, watching as his blue eyes penetrated deep into the secrets they had unearthed. A shattered fragment of times gone by, he’d told her, one of uncountable many that drifted through the aether. He knew more about this than she did.
“A little,” he said, “Although there are many more pieces to find. If the knowledge I am seeking was so easily found than many more would have uncovered it.”
They settled down on a rogue island, its only feature a small oasis whose water cascaded into the abyss. Dionysus sunk into the water, using the power of the gathered elemental energy to replenish his stamina, while Phantasia sat dangling her legs over the murky depths. Looking into the darkness reminded her of a question she’d wanted to ask.
“Why did Calypso become a demon?”
Dionysus seemed lost in thought, and Phantasia turned to see him studying his reflection with a sad face. “Why does any faerie become a demon?” he said after a long pause, “For power. Calypso was afraid of…” he turned his back to her and looked up at the distant lands above, “She feared you, Phantasia. There are those in our Queendom who never agreed with Queen Thetis’s decision to adopt you. When she made you a princess – her sole princess – that rift widened.”
He rose from the lake and whipped his waterfall hair back. “The wars have brought corruption into our elemental nature, and the influence of human emotions cannot be underestimated. Calypso sought an alternative method to achieving her goals and embraced the darkness.”
“But I thought darkness killed us?”
He came and stood next to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Only if we allow it to. If we cannot endure and expel it from our system in time, we either allow it to destroy us, or embrace it. You could say, then, that those who fear death become demons.
“We know there is no end to our existence – we either reincarnate or allow ourselves to become one with the Goddess – but there are still some who fear that. When we reincarnate, we do not simply ‘start again’. It is a new life as a new person, informed by the lessons and mistakes made in the previous life. Some, however, still cling to the present. Darkness gives them the power to cheat the cycle and continue on forever.”
Phantasia, overwhelmed by the complex systems that governed life and death, walked down the side of the island and kicked her feet in the waterfall. “I’m never going to understand this stuff, am I? I’m just not normal enough to see things the way everyone else sees them,”
