*****

East Heaven Kingdom, January 23

Princess Maya hated to admit it, but she missed her sister. For all their arguments, squabbles, and general disagreements, they cared a great deal for each other, and they both knew it. For that reason, when Mint came stomping through the castle's back door at around nine-thirty during one of that winter's worst storms, Maya hugged her.

"Please," Mint said after a few seconds, "tell me now. Did someone die, was there a terrible disaster, or have you just gone crazy while I was away?" Maya released her cold, wet, bedraggled sister and laughed at her.

"You know," she said, still smiling, "it is possible that I'm just happy to see you." Mint frowned.

"Possible, okay. Likely is a really different story." Maya sighed tolerantly. She knew Mint was glad to see her, and especially to be out of the wind and sleet. Looking her sibling's filthy tunic over, Maya wondered what kind of adventures she'd had.

"I know what you're thinking," Mint said, before she could even ask. "No, we didn't find a [relic]. The entire stinking trip was a bust. We got chased all over the stupid desert by a bunch of nomadic, carnivorous pigmies who wanted to eat me, that should make you happy. But no [relic]."

"That wasn't what I was going to ask," Maya said smoothly, "but out of curiosity, did you find anything worth mentioning? After all, you were in the Atelier the most powerful Aeon ever to have lived." Mint snorted in disgust.

"For what the stuff we found is worth, he might as well have been Fancy Mel." Mint halted abruptly, leaned close enough to Maya to whisper, and quickly asked, "She hasn't come looking for me, right?"

"Who, Mel?" Maya asked, slightly confused. "No, of course not. Why would she?"

"Forget it. Just don't let her in if she shows up, she's got it in for me after some of the...stuff...that happened. Anyway," Mint leaned back and brushed at the front of her tunic in a fruitless attempt to remove some of the dirt, "I'm gonna go take a really long bath. If you need me, pretend you don't know where I am."

She started to walk off, then hesitated and turned back to Maya.

"Two more things, real quick. I forgot about it at first, but Klaus made me bring back this huge box he thought you'd find interesting, or something. It's probably just some ugly old robes Valen wore, I dunno."

She turned back toward the staircase that led to her rooms.

"What was the other thing?" Maya inquired.

"What?"

"You said there were two things. That was only one."

"Oh. Right. The other thing was to say...um..." Mint shifted uncomfortably, blushing and looking terribly sheepish, "...that I'm glad to see you. I mean, mostly because I was just hanging out with a bunch of big ugly boys for three months, but--"

"Mint."

"Yeah?" Maya smiled understandingly.

"It's okay. I'm glad to see you too."

"Oh. Yeah. So...yeah. I'll see you in the morning, then, huh?" Maya nodded. Mint turned and hurried up the steps, leaving her sister to investigate a large, polished mahogany trunk two of the castle's porters had just carried inside.

*****

Maya had the porters bring the trunk to her own chambers, then left them with the instruction that she was not to be disturbed. Not that many people would at this time of night, but she felt it was a good, queen-like thing to do, and she was always on the lookout for practice.

She stared for some time at the trunk's surface, gleaming wood reflecting the reddish light of her bedroom's fireplace. There were wonderfully mysterious symbols lining its top and sides, and an elaborate lock, made entirely of gold, adorned the front. Maya leaned closer and discovered some chinks in the metal.

"Mint," she thought. "She must have tried to break it open." Klaus had most likely figured out how to open the chest in the end, but she wondered why he hadn't kept it himself. She walked all the way around the trunk, and was pleased to find a piece of parchment with Klaus' handwriting fastened to the back. There was a golden key attached to the bottom with a spot of melted wax, and she dropped that into the pocket of her blouse while she read the letter.

To her majesty, the younger princess of East Heaven Kingdom, it read, and Maya laughed inwardly at the formal opening.

Now that I've made myself sound professional, how are you? Mint has, whether you believe it or not, been of great help to my expedition. It was actually her magic that gained us entry into Valen's Atelier. It's an imposing place, believe me. Valen was quite the show person. I've never seen so much marble in my entire life.

Maya smiled at the thought of Prima, a magical doll Klaus had adopted as his son, bouncing along through Valen's Atelier.

*****

Maya finished the letter and set it on her bed with a few hundred butterflies fluttering in her stomach. What could the trunk hold that would make Klaus send it all this way? Burning with curiosity, Maya slipped the key from her pocket, knelt in front of the chest, and pushed it into the lock. With one easy turn, the wooden lid rose slightly. Sliding her fingers into the new crack, Maya lifted it the rest of the way and gaped in wonder.

The chest was entirely full of books.

"No wonder Klaus didn't tell Mint what was in here," Maya thought, taking the topmost book from the pile. "She's never been much for reading..." Maya folded the cover back, but not before taking a moment to marvel at its surface. It was heavy brown leather, intricate designs burned in with undeniable skill. Shiny gold rivets held its binding together; another reason not to give it to Mint, Maya thought with a grin. She'd take the gold and leave the book behind.

The pages behind the cover were like no paper or parchment Maya had seen, more like stiff cloth than anything else. She was struck by a brief pang of surprise when she saw that the book's writing was entirely in Aeon, but it wasn't a problem. Unlike her sister, Maya enjoyed the classes her tutors gave on ancient languages, and was especially fluent in Aeon. After skimming only a few lines, she began to realize the scope of Klaus' find.

"It's a diary," she thought, feeling her heartbeat quicken. "Valen's diary...this alone would have been worth three months." Setting the book on the carpet, Maya sifted quickly through a few of the other volumes in the trunk. Another diary. Of course, she told herself. Valen lived for thousands of years; he would have needed more than one. One especially thick book was full of sketches and technical drawings. She paged through it, then halted. Toward the end, all the drawings became variations on a single object, finally taking shape as a [relic] Mint had once sought for nearly two years. Maya had never seen it herself, but her sister spoke of it so often she couldn't help but recognize it.

Dewprism.

The Dewprism had been Valen's prized accomplishment, his greatest and most jealously guarded [relic]. Even the powerful Book of Cosmos has been less that nothing before it. The Dewprism was a reflection of the entire universe, containing it and at the same time existing completely outside of it. How Valen had created such a thing was proof of his brilliance, thought Maya. And this book chronicled its development. She studied the volume for nearly an hour, reading various notes Valen himself had made about the [relic's] creation and progress. By the time she had finished, Maya had drawn to distinct conclusions.

One, Valen was a genius.

Two, he was impossibly arrogant.

"I suppose it comes with power," she thought, and reached for the diary. It was dated, in Aeon of course, 'C.C. 510, Rotation 23'. Maya was familiar with the system, as she had once spoken at length with an Aeon spirit named Atenacious who inhabited the Book of Cosmos. 'C.C.' stood for 'Celestial Cycle', and a Rotation was a system of time unique to Aeons. It was difficult to say exactly how long either unit was, as Aeons lived vastly longer lives than humans did, but Maya understood their meaning nonetheless. She spent a few minutes glancing through the diary, but found nothing that immediately grabbed her attention, and selected another book.

For some reason, the center of it felt unusually hard, and she turned it over in her hands to get a better look at it. To the girl's surprise, she found it was two books, fastened with metal plugs where their back and front covers met. The top book had a short note on its first page, and Maya read it eagerly.

Maya turned the page with a trembling hand. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, as the drawings were done in a light shade. Slowly the lines took shape, finally resolving into a boy, perhaps a little younger than herself. He was standing outside a building of some sort, staring into the sky. Maya was immediately struck by an odd feeling, a sense of deja vu, but it seemed unwarranted. Shaking her head, she turned the page.

The next picture was of the same boy, this time sitting on a wooden bench. He was examining what seemed to be the inner workings of a clock, the back of which was sitting on the bench beside him. Maya couldn't help but marvel at the lifelike nature the drawing lent its subject; not only had Valen been a genius, but he was an artist as well.

Dozens of the pages following were of the same boy, walking outside, working with strangely shaped tools, even asleep in a bed. Each new page captured its subject in a moment of life, preserved for eternity on this strange paper. As she went further, another person entered the drawings, a man with dark eyes and a sharp, sneering mouth. Maya's heart skipped several beats.

This man she recognized. She couldn't fail to, as he had served in her father's court for years.

Doll Master.

*****

Maya dropped the book as if it had burned her. Several things had jumped to mind at the same time when she came to the rendering of Doll Master and his narrow gaze. The mysterious boy, she now recalled, was Ruenis, a doll Valen had made for the sole purpose of his own resurrection. Doll Master, or Ruecian, as he was named, was another of Valen's dolls, his duty the same as Ruenis'.

Once these facts were cemented in her brain, Maya was again lost in confusion. Valen's note had clearly stated that the inventions had 'filled many of my later years with great pleasure,' which contradicted everything Maya knew about dolls. They had had only one purpose, hadn't they? Unless...

Maya picked the book up once more, and rapidly flipped through it. Every page was covered, front and back, with drawings of Ruenis and Ruecian. But as she went further on, several new faces appeared. She immediately saw three that were unmistakable, those of Psycho Master, Trap Master, and Mode Master. These were dolls that Ruecian had controlled, and Maya was all too familiar with them. But just a little past that was someone she had never seen before; a girl, slender, delicate, strikingly beautiful, and with the unmistakable form of a Dewprism shard in her forehead, stood with Ruenis. This was one of the few where they seemed to have posed for the drawing, as they were both facing forward and smiling. Ruenis had his arm over the girl's shoulders, and her head was pressed close to his chest.

"It doesn't make sense," Maya thought, delving even further. "The dolls were just tools, but this makes it look as if they were Valen's children." Further confusing her was yet another set of dolls, again female, but far less attractive than the first. They were identical twins, both with the same haughtily smiling mouths and cold, ruthless eyes. Maya disliked them as soon as she saw them, and the fact that Ruecian was with them in the next drawing didn't help. Then, a few pages later, the drawings abruptly ceased. There was nothing but blank white space after it. On the inside of the back cover another note, far shorter than the first, was scrawled in Valen's handwriting:

After a quiet moment, Maya took a deep breath and opened the book.

*****

As I stand here in the darkness, awaiting my death, I reflect. I look back on my life, my many achievements, and the things which brought me such joy. Ironically, these are also the tools that will soon lead to my ultimate destruction. It would be humorous if my situation were not so grim, but I still can't avoid hearing fate laugh at me.

To think that what began as a simple experiment could lead to the doom of I, Valen, greatest of the Aeons, is nearly inconceivable. But, nonetheless, it is so. It was my own foolishness, to be perfectly blunt, that has placed me in the grip of this hopeless predicament.

For the sake of clarity, I will elaborate.

---

As I examine my cluttered past, I realize that it was on the day of my greatest pride that my fate was sealed. I had finally completed my ultimate masterpiece, my magnum opus, and I was basking in my own glory before it.

I had named it Dewprism.

I don't care to go into detail on my masterpiece, as it is not the focus of these pages. However, a few points must be mentioned for the sake of clarity. For time's sake, let us call the Dewprism a condensed version of reality. Nearly anything, past, present, or future, that existed at any point in our universe, could be obtained through it with a small amount of practice. In essence, it mirrored anything that could conceivably exist, and could bring it immediately to the user. From start to finish, it had taken me nearly a hundred years to create, and its construction had been exceedingly trying on all my nerves, as well as on my magnificent brain.

But I digress. As I before said, this was directly after the Dewprism had been finished, and I was ready for the end of my solitude. A century is enough to make anyone lonely, even a solitary person such as myself. I had a few friends in the community, as well as enough enemies to keep myself busy for some time, so I decided to pay some of the more prominent ones visits.

---

My first task, as I knew exactly where to go for it, was to call on my (for lack of a better term) 'arch rival' , Atenacious. Atenacious was highly thought of among the inventors in my circle, as he had created a number of very fine [relics]. I admit that they were impressive, but as I approached his Atelier that spring morning, I found myself sneering at their memory. Before my Dewprism, they seemed laughable.

*****

A knock on Maya's door made her drop the book again, and she let out a short gasp of surprise.

"I guess I was getting a little too wrapped up in this stuff..." she thought, momentarily forgetting to sound like a princess. Catching hold of herself, she stood and closed the lid to the trunk, then walked to the door. Mint was waiting outside in a bathrobe, her red hair still damp.

"Hey," she said, giving Maya a quick smile. "My bath didn't take as long as I'd planned, so I figured I'd stop by and see what was in that stupid trunk." She slipped past her sister before she could object. "It had better be something good, I'll say that. I burned up enough magic lugging it back for a couple of pack mules. The damn thing was heavy enough to be filled with bricks."

"Oh," Maya said quickly, stepping in front of the chest, "it's nothing, really. Just a bunch of old books." To herself, she thought, "What am I doing? Mint has more right to these than I do."

"Books?" Mint asked, frowning. "Klaus made me drag this all the way from the Southern Desert, and it was full of books? Sheesh, these had better be some pretty amazing reading."

Reflexively, Maya said, "You can read?"

"Ha. Ha. C'mon, lemme have a look. I'm the one who got the Atelier open in the first place, these are really mine." Still uncertain why she had acted so childish, Maya sat back down on the floor, facing the trunk. Mint pried it open and shuffled through with minimal interest. "Boring...boring...really boring...dang, wasn't there anything worth looking at in here?"

"Nope," Maya lied.

"Oh. Bummer. I guess it really was...hey, what's that?" Maya looked down and saw with a twinge of panic that Valen's diary still lay where it had fallen.

"This?" She grabbed it and tossed it casually over her shoulder onto the bed. "That's nothing. It's even less interesting that the other ones."

"Right, right. If you say it's boring than it must be something cool. Otherwise you'd be trying to get me to read it, and putting me to sleep telling me about it." Mint dodged past her sister and belly-flopped onto the mattress, snatching the diary as she landed. "So, lessee...hey, looks like the old fart was a pretty good artist. Didn't see that one coming." She turned the pages, taking hardly a second to look at the drawings. "Ugly guy. Ugly guy. Hey, is that Doll Master?"

"Yes," said Maya, wishing Mint would leave. The entire moment had been spoiled, thanks to her loud sister.

"Really ugly guy, then. Ugly...hey, who's this?"

"Who?" Maya leaned over Mint's shoulder and looked at the page. It was the one of the many drawings of the girl. She was sitting with her back against a stone pillar, marble from the look of it, playing with a small animal that Maya didn't recognize. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "It's impossible to miss Doll Master, and I know the 'ugly guy', as you so quaintly put it, is a friend of Rue's. He's another doll, his name is Ruenis."

"Yeah? Rue talked about him a lot. Hey, Maya, you think this girl is another doll?" Maya blinked, wishing she had thought of that first.

"Of course she is, why else would she have a crystal in her forehead?" Mint didn't reply, but she did make a unique growling noise she was in the habit of doing when she was wrong. "But," Maya said, not in the mood to start a fight, "I'm not sure who she is. Neither Rue or Ruenis ever mentioned her. Any thoughts?"

" Not yet. But once we read the notes on the back of the pages we'll know exactly who she is." Maya gave Mint a skeptical look.

"What are you talking about? There aren't any notes. I think I definitely would have seen them, don't you?" Mint just smiled with infuriating smugness.

"And you always rag on me about not paying attention in classes. How can you not realize what this paper is made of? This is Birchwillow parchment. The only people who use this stuff are magicians, and they always write messages on the back."

"Oh really? Then where are they?" Mint rolled her eyes in disgust.

"You can sure be clueless sometimes." Mint bounced off the bed and pulled back her arm, clearly meaning to throw the book into the fireplace.

"No!" Maya shouted and lunged at her, but it was too late. Mint had already tossed the diary onto the hot embers. Heavy white smoke poured off, and the room filled quickly with an unpleasantly musty smell.

"Mint...what did you do that for?" Maya asked, staring helplessly at the renewed flames. The elder girl was unconcerned.

"Like I said," Mint grinned, "I paid attention in our magic classes. The parchment soaks up ink, and turns it invisible until it gets hot enough. It's a great way to hide things from people who don't know their magic paper, like, say...stupid, snobby princesses?"

Maya glowered.

"Just get the book out before the cover burns."

*****

The two princesses of East Heaven kingdom set aside their differences for once and sat on the edge of the bed, heads nearly touching as Mint opened the book.

"Flip to the back again," Maya instructed. "I'd like to know more about that girl."

"Bossy, bossy. Just wait a minute." Mint turned to the drawing of Ruenis, where he had been peering at the clock's workings, to the blank back of the page. However, there was one small difference.

"It really is a message," Maya murmured in awe.

"Of course it is, stupid," snapped Mint. "I told you I knew what I was talking about. What's it say?"

"It says, 'Ruenis, puzzling over the insides of his favorite timepiece.'" Mint waited for a moment.

"That's it?" she demanded, sounding disgusted. "No big secrets, or hidden [relic] locations?"

"Not a thing," said Maya. "It looks like they're just to explain the drawings."

"Dang," Mint muttered, and shoved the book at Maya. "This sucks. I'm going to bed. What a frigging waste." She left the room, still grumbling.

*****

Maya let out an undisguised sigh of relief after Mint had left. Her sister was strong and brave, she knew, but hopelessly inept at appreciating some of the more subtle pleasures life had to offer. Maya turned to the pages where she had seen the strange girl doll, and found the sketch the sketch of her and Ruenis facing forward. Turning it over, she found the inscription to read, "Ruenis and Cosette, smiling for me."

"Cosette," thought Maya with a curious smile. "What a strange name. I wonder if Valen gave it to her." The next picture was Cosette, alone this time, standing in front of a mirror. One hand was lightly fingering the stone set in her forehead.

"Just like Rue's," thought Maya. "Did he read this? Klaus didn't say...I wonder what he'd think."