The Royal graveyard was the final resting place of many ancient kings and their queens, along with their sons and daughters. Located behind the gardens and airport, it had gotten larger and larger as the centuries passed by. There were three new additions as of last week since an order had been given to move them. Alistair Maverick Ashford, his late wife and Sauron now had a prominent permanent place here, facing the mountains.

Pulling out the weeds surrounding my father's gravestone, I stopped to admire the new engraving. 

'Alistair Maverick Ashford, beloved father and husband, master at making things up as he went along.'

Smiling, I continued to clean his gravestone, followed by his wife's and Sauron's. When I was done, I placed a bouquet of white carnations at each tombstone. I sat down in front of my father's grave, hugging my legs and sighed, suddenly feeling like a little girl who simply missed her father.

"I know it's been a while, but the last couple of weeks have been eventful to say the least. I figured it out, dad, thanks to you introducing me to Indiana Jones, and I want you to know that it's done. Your murderers are gone, their hold on the kingdoms has ended, along with the kingdoms altogether. The borders are no more. It was chaos at first and the species were very hostile towards each other, but they realized they need each other to survive now that everything they knew is gone. The hatred is still there, and it probably always will be, but everyone's keeping it to themselves for now. Once the dust settles, it'll flare up again.

As for me, if I were to say I was fine, you would definitely say I was lying and I would be. As much as I try to move on and leave it behind to go live my life again, I can't. How can one move on when so much has happened? My heart has darkened and I know I'll never be able to feel emotions like I did before ever again. Maybe it is what I'm supposed to do, carry loss around until I resemble every bad memory, every terrible fear, every nightmare anyone has ever had, future queen of a graveyard.

Now that the case has been solved, it's quiet, too quiet. Jorden's been absent for a while, but I know the worst is yet to come. The generals weren't the biggest enemy after all, it's about something bigger. Whatever it is, it'll be up to me to stop it. So maybe one day it'll all fade away and the weight of the world won't be mine, but that rare day is not today."

It was stupid to expect a response, because silence was the only thing that greeted me here. There was no wind, no sun, no sign of any animal, nothing.

"I don't know when I'll be able to come back here, but you better be kicking some ass wherever you are, dad. I love you, always have, always will."

After walking back to the palace past the Royal Airport and the gardens, I leaned on one of the many balconies facing the kingdom, staring ahead, thinking.

I hadn't gotten the chance to tour through the human kingdom before everything went down, instead I had read the first ever kings' journal written while the borders went up belonging to king Primus. Reading it, I discovered that every area resembled one of the ancient countries and their cultures. Countries like France, The Netherlands, Canada, The United Kingdom and Japan, all whom had long been destroyed and whose names had been forgotten.

That wasn't the only thing I learned. The journal revealed that the humans had in fact experienced with the animals and succeeded, creating absolute menaces, placed in the other kingdoms to keep their inhabitants in check. The atom bombs that the other kings knew of were a lie, in fact every bit of information the kings thought they discovered was false, a carefully created fabrication to keep them in the dark, planted there by the humans.

And the rings. Those stupid rings. The humans could've split the genes and manipulated them to make the vampires sun proof, just like they had experienced on the animals, but that would've meant taking one of the vampires biggest weaknesses away, causing the humans to have less control. So the rings came into play, rings so that the human elite could rule over every vampire that had one.

Humans were the biggest monsters of all.

At least for now.

Mr. Anders cleared his throat as he joined me on the balcony. "The investigation into the cause of Foxglove's death has almost finished."

"Oh, c'mon! It's taking so long, everyone knows he died of natural causes."

"He was forced off the roof, Iola."

Iola instead of a title, an improvement.

"Gravity's natural." I shrugged.

There was no evidence that I had killed the generals. No one had heard at thing, the cameras happened to be off and apparently, I couldn't leave fingerprints or DNA traces. The only two people who had seen a thing were Valerio and Haimon, who smartly kept their mouths shut. I had provided evidence of their planned coup and mass murder, so the investigators were leaning towards a deal gone wrong with Foxglove killing the generals in very, very creative ways, after which he struggled on the roof and happened to fall off.

Was it entirely realistic? Definitely not, but after the new investigators heard of the generals' fucked up plans, they didn't really want solve it anymore anyway. As for the old detective, he was rotting in a cell.

As for the new generals, I had carefully picked tolerable humans, vampires and werewolves who had appropriate knowledge, actually wanted to work, listened to me and didn't hate each other's guts. That was good enough for now.

Mr. Anders shook his head with a laugh. The man was smart as hell so he knew exactly what happened. "Good riddance."

He was about to get back to work again, but I spoke up, stopping him. "Do you happen to know if a map of the entire world and the kingdom's place on it exists? I haven't found one yet but I'm going to need one."

"Those were burned long ago as kings didn't want to be reminded."

"Reminded of what?"

"That even the combined kingdoms are a tiny thing compared to the rest of the world, like three countries of Old Europe in comparison with how big the Ancient World used to be."

"But I don't understand. Wouldn't it have been way wiser to keep the maps from a strategic point of view so you could know what's out there?"

"Of course, but some kings didn't want to feel small or irrelevant compared to the rest of the world, so they erased every trace of it from the kingdoms."

"Just like they erased each other. Thank you." I mumbled, nodding to Mr. Anders who walked off.

History was deleted because of kings with bruised egos. At this point I wasn't even surprised anymore. Just when I thought I had seen it all, they managed to disappoint even further.

My time alone was short lived as Jorden materialized next to me. That fucker had some nerve, showing up after all this time.

Ignoring him like he wasn't there, he decided to bother me regardless. "The time has come for you to be the hero this world needs."

"The one you need, you mean. You're out of luck, I'm no hero. I'm no righteous queen, and your grand ancient plan to get me to work for you has backfired miserably. I will watch you suffer and burn simply out of spite." I spat out, narrowing my eyes at him, pushing myself up from the edge of the balcony, ready to yeet that motherfucker into another universe.

"But you're the only one who can protect me from the others." He whined, moving his hands dramatically.

First the mistakes and now the others?

Focusing on his mind, I tried to pinpoint it on what he was thinking about. Images flashed by of different people, failed experiments, different species, various armies, and I thought about what he said to me before. I was perfect, unique, exactly how he wanted me to be. There was only one of me and I had all the qualities I needed to do what had to be done.

He had tried to create me before, but failed and his failures hated him for it, so much in fact that they wanted to destroy him.

I shrugged. "You know how the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"I will join the other side and destroy everything you love."

Okay, Anakin.

"The ones trying to destroy you? That's funny." Tilting my head, I scoffed. "And good luck, there's nothing I love left on this earth."

He paced back and forth, running his hands through his hair, before pointing to me infuriated. "No, no, no! This can't be happening! You're The One, you can't disobey me!"

"I should've been born with a warning label. Disobeying seems to be my trademark. I only do things my way and there's nothing that you, you old, big ball of magma, stone and dirt, can do about it." I smirked, crossing my arms.

"I'm warning you, if you won't join me, I will turn against you and your kingdom, killing it all. You're a bigger threat to what's out there than less powerful me. Like you said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I'm giving you one last chance." He said firmly.

He tried to act tough, but even he couldn't hide his dread beneath his fury anymore. Whatever was out there could kill him and thus destroy the earth if they refrained from working with him. He needed my protection from what he feared most, death, but so far I had refused, making him so desperate he would try to work with what he actually wanted me to destroy, which was everyone and everything except for me. 

"You're giving me one last chance? That's cute."

The veins on his forehead popped out and he roared. "I will bring your world into ruin! Will you have peace, or war?"

I grinned. He had no idea what he was getting into. He was blind to the fact that this was going to lead to him destroying himself.

"I will have war."

One hour later, I was standing in front of a camera crew, about to do what I really didn't want to. Give a fucking speech to the entire kingdom, which was going to be projected onto walls by Royal drones which I had created and charged with my powers. They would melt down afterwards along with the cameras of the crew. 

Why was I giving a speech? I had no problem with the upcoming war, Jorden had cryptically warned me about it long ago. I didn't know much about it, but one thing I was aware of, was that it was going involve the entire world. 

Now I was done protecting the walking headaches which lived in this kingdom, but I did want for them to have the opportunity to protect themselves. How they were going to do that was up to them, they would have to use whatever basic resources they had. Even if I did want to help them, I wasn't even going to be here, I was going to be at the center of the battlefield.

The crew gave a sign that we were live and I let out a sigh, turning my gaze to the camera, feeling stupid. I wasn't made for this formal shit.

"Hello everyone. You might be wondering why I'm suddenly giving this speech, I'm wondering the same thing as well for different reasons, but here we are anyway. I'm going to rip the band-aid off right at the very beginning, because there's no use in dwelling on useless formalities.

I'm not asking you to like me. I'm not asking you to agree with everything I do or have done. Hell, I'm not even asking you to like each other. I'm asking you to fight for your lives and for those of your family and friends if you want to survive.

I don't know what's out there, but I'm going to find out. Whatever it is, it's powerful, evil and it's coming for everyone. No one's going to fight your wars for you, you're going to have to do it yourselves. Even if I wanted to, I can't be in multiple places at once. I've tried to before, but failed and had to face the agonizing consequences. 

Everyone fails, but this time none of us can afford it. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the aftermath has been shown to me a long time ago and it's going to bloody. So I'm giving you a warning.

The battle for the earth is about to begin and if you want to have a place in this world, you're going to have to fight for it."

On the way to my chambers, Valerio had taken a break from hesitantly working with Haimon to create plans which would work for every species and had started following me instead, so I took a right and walked all the way to a nearby door which led to the gardens.

Sitting down on the stone bench in front of the pond, it didn't take long for Valerio to do the same. While we both stared at the swans, he broke the silence. "That was quite the warning."

"It's the truth." I shrugged, folding my hands together.

"Why did it feel like a goodbye?"

"You know I need to go. Mr. Anders will oversee everything while I'm gone."

"The man is old as fuck, he might die while you're away."

"Don't disrespect my man like that. I promise you, that man isn't dying any time soon, I've made sure of it." I blurted out, frowning like Valerio was crazy.

"Do I want to know?" He sighed, shaking his head.

"Powers, baby." I exclaimed overly excited, raising my chin in the air with a smile.

Killing my brief moment of fun, he had to ask. "You're really leaving everyone to their own defenses, huh?" 

"Do you really think I'm going to let the worst of what's to come reach this place? Why do you think I'm leaving? I might not care about them, but if I wanted to them to die, I would've killed everyone already. I gave them one last chance to start over and do things right this time around, if they fuck that up and destroy themselves while doing it, so be it. I'm not going to save them again. It is what it is." I said firmly, shrugging.

He nudged my shoulder with his own. "See, you're not evil. I knew it once those animals respected you. Animals are a great judge of character."

"I'm not good, either." Sighing, I turned to face him directly. "And I know you're still in love with me, but I need you to let it go. I'm not able to give you the love that you deserve."

"I see. Friends then? For now at least?" He grinned, extending his hand to me, trying to hide his hurt.

That response was a little too quick.

He was never going to give up hope, was he?

Shaking his hand, I rolled my eyes. "Sure."

We let go and turned our eyes back to the pond again, curiosity bubbling within him.

"By the way, have you figured out what you are yet?"

"A monster, a necessary evil, a freak, a keeper of balance, the thing that haunts your worst nightmares, a darkness, earth's creation, inevitable, destiny, the apocalypse. It doesn't matter, call it what you want, but I'll call it Death."

Before he was able to respond, the wind picked up. A gust flew by like a hurricane, sending objects flying and ripping trees from the ground. It was followed by a loud roar that boomed through the sky like thunder, giving me goosebumps.

Valerio jumped up, looking around fully on edge, preparing to be ambushed. "What the fuck was that?!"

Looking up to the sky, a grin formed on my face. I couldn't see anything, but I could feel it all the way in my blood. A twinkle appeared in my eyes as I turned them to the mountains. Some dreams did come true.

"Dragon."