Chapter 144 All Hail Trivia

Chapter 144 All Hail Trivia
Breath returned to Yuna's body all at once, deep and sudden, dragging in the dry, dusty air of the canyon like it was the first breath she'd ever taken.

And with it came everything else.

It didn't ease into her — it flooded, pouring in from every direction at once, every corner of the canyon crashing against her senses like a tide with no shore to break against.

This wasn't what the Connection Spell had shown her before. This was the whole world, all at once, and no wall left standing between her and it.

"Finally," she breathed, and inhaled again, as if she could drink the feeling down.

She opened her eyes. The air itself seemed to bow toward her, humming low and submissive.

In her hand, her staff had already stopped being wood. The pale Myrh-tree carving she'd carried since her ordination as Nyára was gone.

In its place: cold star-metal, etched with runes older than any language she recognized, pulsing with Anima that didn't so much flow as spill, endlessly, like it had forgotten how to run out. Where a blue gemstone had once sat at its crown, the phases of the moon now turned slowly through solid metal, and sang while they did it.

Her antlers had become a crown of gold, stars caught and burning in its points. Her robes were no longer wool and thread but something woven from light, from silk no mortal hand had spun.

And her eyes, when she caught her reflection rippling in the dust, pierced through everything they touched.

Somewhere close, a voice she almost recognized as her own murmured, "She's risen," and was gone the instant she turned toward it.

Every person around her had already dropped to their knees, heads bowed so low their foreheads nearly touched the canyon floor.

Even the ravens on the rock ledges had gone rigid, unblinking. The vines along the walls had curled back on themselves, as though something in them understood exactly what to fear.

Light lifted off her in slow beams, painting the clouds gold, lingering there even after she looked away and back down at the crowd kneeling before her.

"Rise." The word came out with a weight that should have pulled every spine in that canyon straight up on instinct alone.

No one moved.

"Please...sisters." Her voice cracked, just slightly, back toward something more familiar. "It's still me, Asteria. You don't have to be afraid of me."

"I'm afraid they can't help it, Trivia."

The voice came from directly below her, calm, measured, entirely unsurprised.

Lord Caius knelt at her feet, one hand resting reverently against the hem of her robe.

"I beseech thee, o Trivia of the Three Ways. Welcome to the living realm."

"Lord Caius." She said his name like an anchor. "Why won't they rise, even when I ask them to?"

He lifted his face to hers, and whatever he saw there answered the question before he spoke it. "It's you, Trivia. What you're radiating, mortals were never built to stand in front of that and stay steady. Your face alone is the shape of power itself."

It was only then Yuna realized her face had become three. She touched it — cheek, jaw, temple, feeling the shift under her own fingers, three expressions layered into one skin.

"Sublime," She chuckled to herself with amusement, still surprised. "Hecate has truly woken."

"You've ascended, Trivia," he said again, rising to his feet. "Manifested in the mortal realm, in the flesh, at full power."

"But I don't feel like Trivia." The admission came out plain, unafraid. "I feel power, more than I know what to do with. Memories that aren't mine. Tens of thousands of years of them, layered on top of each other." She looked down at her own glowing hands. "But underneath all of it..." Her fist closed slowly. "Hecate is silent. We're one, but her voice has gone with the awakening. We didn't exactly start on good terms, she and I."

Her gaze sharpened on Lord Caius, and for a moment the goddess in her voice turned into something colder, older, and entirely unforgiving.

"I'm grieving something even this body can't seem to put down, Lord Caius. When I needed my healer most, you let her go. You let my sisters die at the Darkness's hands."

Caius bowed low, no defense offered.

"Forgive the failing, Holy Trivia. The Lunar Coven's spirit borders were under full assault. The Nyára's strength was the only thing keeping the Darkness from bleeding into this realm entirely. I fell short of what you deserved."

"It doesn't change anything now." Yuna exhaled, turning from him toward the kneeling Apprentices. "What's done is done. I can't call them back, they've already crossed too far into the afterlife for that. I'll carry their names as long as I exist."

"Ahem." Caius cleared his throat, gently redirecting her. "My lady. They're waiting for you."

Yuna turned, and the goddess in her posture cracked for just a second, enough for the old, awkward Nyára underneath to show through, eyes wide, jaw dropping.

"Sisters..."

Behind Lord Caius stood the Nyára. All of them, whole, alive, unbroken.

"That really you, Yuna?" Ophelia's voice was hushed, careful, as if speaking too loud might undo it.

"I...I'm..." Yuna couldn't finish the sentence. The joy hit her harder than the power had.

They didn't wait for her to find the rest of the words. All at once, they surged forward, unbothered by the aura pouring off her, and swallowed her into the middle of them before she could brace for it.

She laughed, really laughed, as they crowded around, marveling at the new crown, the new robes, the staff none of them had ever seen the Keep issue.

"Yuna, is that..." Hilda's hand flew to her mouth. "Sisters, it's Trivia! It's our Holy mother!"

The words rippled out through the canyon like they weighed nothing at all.

"You look like you fell out of the stars." Livia shook her head slowly. "gods, I could drop to my knees right now and kiss the hem of your robe and mean it."

"You're so beautiful, Yuna." Ophelia cupped her three-faced cheek, still not quite believing what her hand was touching. "You're really her? Really Trivia?"

"Is that god-metal?" Theia was already circling the staff, eyes narrowed in fascination. "The Keep never gave us anything close to this."

"It's Night-bringer, Theia. Trivia's scepter of power." Miriam said, running her fingers on Yuna's sparkling robe.

"Yuna and the goddess share the same skin now," Ariadne said, stepping out from the crowd, still faintly shaken. "I felt it the second she transformed. Even I went down on my knees. I still can't believe that happened." A short, embarrassed laugh. "I'm never letting myself live that down."

Yuna let the chaos wash over her a moment longer before she found her footing again.

"It's so good to see you all, sisters. My heart's been in pieces." She let out her familiar, goofy laugh, the one that hadn't changed no matter what her face had become. "Alive, untouched, unspoiled by the Darkness. Lord Caius did more than I had any right to ask of him." She glanced at him. "Thank you."

He bowed a third time, saying nothing.

Then, as if remembering herself, she turned back to the wider crowd. "Please, everyone, to your feet."

Heads lifted together, a low murmur rolling through the gathered Apprentices before, one by one, they rose.

And then Claudia's voice broke through it, ringing out...

"All hail Trivia!"

"All hail Trivia!"

The whole canyon answered as one, Anima flashing gold above raised hands, the sound cracking off the canyon walls like thunder given a chorus.

Yuna felt heat rise in her three-faced cheeks, half embarrassment, half something she didn't have a name for yet.

"Peace be upon you all, children of the Darkmoon." Her voice steadied, deepened, found the shape of command without her quite meaning it to. "I'm proud of every one of you. You made it through the Selection Ritual, that alone speaks to your strength, your resolve. And for the ones we lost, know their path is lit by my gaze now. They are with me. At peace."

She let the words settle.

"From this moment, I take this war as my own. I will see this suffering ended. Go home. Pray. Stay watchful. Your goddess fights for you now."

The cheer that rose after that was deafening, every voice in the canyon lifted at once.

Yuna could hardly believe the words had come from her, she wasn't sure the old her could have managed that speech even reading it off a scroll a thousand times over.

She turned back to Lord Caius. "Take them home. Protect them, protect the whole Lunar Coven. That's your charge now. Don't let the Darkness touch one more of my children."

"Yes, Trivia." He bowed.

"This world is being poisoned, slowly, deliberately." She looked past him, to the Nyára. "Dawn has already been erased from existence. It won't rise again, not while the Darkness still stands. There's no time left to spend here. I have to reach my Sovereign — the Darkmoon, and what's left of its army. And end this, for good."

"Let us come with you," Ophelia said, stepping forward.

"No." The word came gently, but there was no room in it to argue. "This is a fight for my kind now, a god's fight. Yours is finished, and it was enough. You made it possible for me to stand here at all. Let me repay that the only way I still can." The light in her flared, warm instead of blinding for just a moment. "I'm still Yuna. Godhood doesn't change what any of you mean to me."

They only smiled back at her, too full to answer.

Yuna turned to face the horizon, planted the crescent point of the Night-Bringer against the canyon floor, and power rolled outward from the impact in a slow, visible wave, washing over every bowed head in its path.

"The Darkness has taken root in reality. If we don't move now, the whole world falls with it. My Sovereign is awake, I can feel it. I have to find..."

"TRIVIA..."

The voice cut through everything at once, and only she heard it.

She went still.

Something ancient and half-buried inside her stirred at the sound of her own name spoken like that: recognition, and underneath it, something closer to fear.

It came again. Closer this time. Certain of her.

"TRIVIA. COME FORTH."