"Hello, Mother," Asteria said through a clenched jaw.
'Of course! Of course she would still be here in some way or another! Is this some sort of Supreme thing, just appearing out of nowhere whenever you don't want them to?!'
"Mmm," the crow mused, shifting its weight on the stone railing and flapping its dark wings. "I know for a fact you didn't challenge a third nightmare... so, natural transcendence?"
Asteria sighed deeply, really not wanting to test her luck against the Sovereign. "If that's what you want to call it, sure. It sort of just happened."
The Queen of Worms and the Queen of Nightmare simply stared at each other for a long, quiet moment before the crow eventually gave up the silent treatment and sighed. "I'm not mad, if you were actually worried about that. It saves us plenty of time, not needing to find a proper cohort or a specific seed for you to challenge that would be beneficial to us."
A heavy pause settled between them before the crow's voice abruptly became freezing cold and calculating.
"Just don't go getting any grand ideas about supremacy, or I'm afraid you simply won't make it out alive."
***
Asteria found herself arriving in the great fortress of Ravenheart shortly afterwards — practically dragged straight there by a mountain of needless attention and official clan business.
It turns out that Saint Whispering Blade himself was visiting the palace to personally deliver the grand bribe from the Great Clan of Valor, hoping she would marry into their blood.
"At least the bribe is a proper storage memory," she muttered to herself as she walked. She thought about how absurd her previous use of [Oasis' Greed] was, given that it was a basic memory meant purely for preserving food and fresh water, yet she routinely threw all kinds of random, heavy objects into it instead.
Standing right outside the towering doors of the main throne room, Asteria could feel the heavily weighted presence of a Supreme far more than before. It felt like the power was actively settling deep into the very pores of her skin. She could hear muffled voices echoing from behind the large wooden door, sounding akin to a tense argument between old friends, yet filled to the brim with true malice.
Pushing the doors open and entering, Asteria saw the severe Saint and her adopted Supreme standing at the far back of the room.
Saint Whispering Blade was a remarkably strong, tall, and quite a severe man with a sharp face and even sharper blue eyes. His dark hair was touched by light silver at the temples, and he was wearing a delicate and incredibly elegant attire that she initially mistook for an impenetrable suit of armour, despite it only being layers of heavy black fabric and a long crimson cloak.
He roughly resembled Morgan in his facial features and those piercing, sharp eyes.
'Maybe they are closely related. I suppose Valor wouldn't send some completely random messenger to offer me their most precious gifts.'
"Ah, welcome, my daughter. I hope the long trip here wasn't too arduous for you after our previous conversation?" Ki Song said. Her physical puppet was sitting comfortably on the throne, smiling warmly while draped in a grand crimson dress. "Madoc, this is Asteria. I hope you've at least heard of her name by now. I know exactly how ignorant you can be of the younger generation."
"I'm afraid my brother wouldn't have allowed me to come here otherwise," the Saint replied smoothly, narrowing his sharp eyes at the new figure standing at the other end of the room; a young woman wearing a black silk dress, with hair that beautifully shone like a moving rainbow of colour.
He turned his curious, analytical gaze towards the Queen of Worms, shrugging his shoulders before he began to ask, "She doesn't exactly seem to be a Master, does she, Ravensong?"
The grand puppet of Ki Song began to heartily laugh, the sound echoing off the stone walls. "A lady should always have her little secrets, Whispering Blade." She mused quietly for a moment before continuing, "Though I know it's no longer a real secret, since you'll immediately go back and tell Vale everything."
Whispering Blade's broad shoulders visibly sank slightly, as if his physical body was being crushed by some foreign, invisible power pressing down from above him. The intense gaze of the Queen of Worms remained completely unperturbed, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened in the room.
Asteria calmly walked over with confident, steady strides, politely greeting the Valor Saint and her adopted Mother. "Saint Madoc," she said, nodding respectfully towards the severe warrior. "Mother," she added, forcing a smile towards the Supreme.
"Good, good. Madoc, I believe that now she is finally here, you should quickly say your piece and leave my sight," Ki Song smiled warmly towards the Queen of Nightmare, while expertly hiding a dark threat to Madoc in the sharp corner of her eye.
Madoc huffed quietly in response to the dismissal. "Saint... Asteria. Great Clan Valor sincerely hopes you'll look warmly upon our formal proposal, and officially presents you with this welcome gift, if nothing else." He stepped forward and placed a heavy hand directly on her shoulder. Asteria's muscles tensed instantly, readying herself in case she needed to react quickly to an attack.
[You have received a memory.]
"That is absolutely all I came to deliver. I hope you think deeply about what our Clan has offered you, and exactly what this gift means for the future."
And just like that, the Saint of Valor completely vanished from the throne room — presumably returning to the waking world since his specific order of business had concluded.
"You explicitly told me you wouldn't accept any proposals as long as I didn't want it," Asteria said with a long sigh, discreetly crossing her fingers behind her back for a bit of good luck. "And I still absolutely don't want to get married, so I hope accepting this package benefits you in some way or another."
"I'll keep my word to you, as long as your mind doesn't suddenly change in the future," Ki Song smiled smoothly, pushing her cold arms up in mock surprise — the sword pinning her body to the throne clattering slightly against the stone. "Is there anything specific you need right now? You have many more options available to you now that you are one of our Saints."
The Queen of Nightmare had assumed a question like this was going to be asked eventually, so she had been actively contemplating what she could dare to ask for or receive from a lofty Supreme; even if that terrifying Supreme routinely called herself Asteria's mother.
"Is there any specific part of the territory around Ravenheart that you wouldn't care if it got irreversibly damaged?" she asked slowly, trying her best not to reveal too much about her true training plans. "I desperately need to get used to my new physical strength and my aspect ability among other things."
Ki Song nodded her head in easy acceptance of the request. "Is it related to sorcery, by any chance? We have already heard that much about your talents. I hope you don't try to hide too much from me in the future, dear."
***
Asteria found herself standing alone atop the freezing, snowy mountains located directly behind the grand Jade Palace; a desolate place that Ki Song didn't mind seeing destroyed, maimed, or completely collapsed by some unknown power or rampaging being.
"It's so cold," Asteria grumbled. Truly, Asteria was a remarkably simple person who could be easily pleased by equally simple things, and likewise completely disappointed by simple things too — one of those things being the local climate. It really seemed like she spent all of her time trapped in the two worst extremes of heat and cold — first the scorching Nightmare Desert, and now the freezing mountains of Ravenheart. "She's definitely just doing this to spite me now. She can't possibly be so blind that she can't see I absolutely hate the cold..."
Opening her glowing runes in front of her vision, Asteria decided to see exactly what her new and clearly improved storage memory was capable of doing.
Memory: [Grave of Abundance]
Memory Rank: Transcendent
Memory Tier: VI
Memory Type: Tool
Memory Description: ["There was once a woman of otherworldly riches and she carried her unimaginable wealth unto her grave."]
Memory Enchantments: [Otherworldly Capacity], [Perfect Preservatives], [Sizable Outcome], [For the Living].
[Otherworldly Capacity]: The space inside of this memory is larger than it is on the outside. The space is determined by the rank and tier of this memory.
[Perfect Preservatives]: Food, water or any substance will not degrade or rot inside of this memory.
[Sizable Outcome]: This memory can change its external size up to the size of its internal capacity.
[For the Living]: This memory can contain living beings.
"Well, that's actually very good then!" She cheered aloud, shivering slightly from the biting wind that she could barely even feel given her new, highly resilient transcendent physique.
Summoning the [Grave of Abundance] into reality, a large, dark wooden coffin materialized on the snow right in front of her. "That's just gross. Did you really have to bury your riches with your rotting body?" Shaking her head, she let out a dry laugh. "I guess that's exactly what I get for summoning a memory that is literally called a grave."
Opening the lid of the wooden coffin, however, was far more nerve-wracking than she expected. What if it actually had a dead body resting in there? Was there some sort of horror hiding inside of it?
Thankfully, the box was completely empty, and the internal size was... much larger than her entire house. No, this memory could easily be used as her physical home instead! It wasn't quite the size of her grand Palace of Glass, but it could definitely reach those heights if it were ever upgraded to a Supreme memory.
'Yes... upgrading memories... I wonder if I can do that too.' Asteria debated her chances at being able to succeed and she deemed it possible if she ever learnt how.
"I'm never going to have to worry about storage space for a long while, it seems," she nodded to herself, thinking of all the tactical uses. "Now, time for what I actually came up here for. Training! Should I even be happy about doing this?"
Asteria had brought some basic writing instruments along to properly carry out her destructive "research" on paper as she went along. The Queen of Nightmare was going to spend a long, grueling while practicing different sentences of Runic Sorcery, studying their exact uses and physical application, and also trying her best to learn the sorcery of Weaver entirely through imitation and blind guesswork — mostly because a certain lying daemon didn't want to just give her the easy answers.
"One," she whispered, tracing shapes in the air.
BANG!
A small, smoking crater was instantly formed in the snow, the size of a small, single-floored building was cleanly carved right into the mountain side in a perfect oval.
"Eleven."
WHOOSH!
A storming, violent gust of freezing wind that actually managed to put tiny gashes in her skin swirled furiously around the mountain's peak, slicing the solid stone nearby — though thankfully not leaving deep enough gashes to completely remove entire parts of the mountain.
"Seventy-two."
SLICE.
CRASH!
And that... was an entire small peak of the mountain that came tumbling down into the valley below in a massive avalanche of stone.
[You have slain, Awakened Demon, Chalice Knight.]
[You have slain, Awakened Demon, Chalice Knight.]
The Queen of Nightmare was carefully writing down every single rune she used, the exact order she drew them in, how much essence she imbued into the symbols, and how she could potentially weaken or strengthen the physical effects — though, in reality, only the latter outcome truly mattered to her.
She wasn't slacking off in her education regarding Weaving, either. For the most part, she now fully understood basic item enchantments and how they were created — the exact distance required between the threads, the patterns they created, and how they were joined together.
However, Asteria still couldn't completely figure out how to weave her very own threads — presumably utilising her own soul essence. As a newly ascended Saint, she knew she could easily channel her essence and simply have it dissipate into nothingness in the air around her if it didn't have a specific destination; she used this method first to try and create some sort of solid thread structure, but it was entirely to no avail.
It was like a small fog of faint violet clouds would form and radiate outward from her palms, yet she could only vaguely sense it and could interact with it even less. Her transcendent form fared slightly better with being able to physically touch the intangible and feel her own essence. She actually succeeded once in forming a single, solid thread of her violet essence that strung beautifully between her fingers like a shiny trophy — but it quickly crumbled into dust the moment she lost her concentration, and she had heavily struggled to replicate the feat ever since.
'Baby steps, Asteria. Just take baby steps,' she huffed in deep frustration, her eight transformed limbs going completely limp out of sheer mental exhaustion as she collapsed into the snow.
Atop the isolated, snowy mountains of Ravenheart, five long months had slowly passed in constant struggle and repeated frustrations — but the time was not without great success in her findings regarding Runic Sorcery, and she had successfully taken her very first steps into the art of Weaving.
Sitting quietly in the snow, Asteria could suddenly feel her deep connection with the Changing Star grow noticeably stronger — the only person she had ever marked with her private brand of dreams.