Titan King: Ascension of the Giant Chapter 1719: The Wall of the Ninth Heaven

"Mama, these years have been exhausting, haven't they?" Elara reached back to embrace Lilith; from her mother's every word of instruction, she'd caught the weariness underneath.

"Very exhausting. So tired I didn't dare say so, for fear of being laughed at." Lilith gave a sweet smile and patted Elara's back, feeling the care and comfort coming from her little jacket.

"Power in our Stoneheart Horde runs too concentrated. If the sovereign and the one who holds the reins lack a long view, lack the breadth to take in new people and new things, they're soon lulled by the glory they already have and lose the drive to push forward." Lilith set the comb she'd just been using steadily into Elara's hand, her tone weighty with meaning. "Those matters, for your mama, were all dreadfully hard. Every decision, every shift of a person from one post to another, had to be turned over and over, every faction's interests balanced. All of it troubles that came from a want of strength and gift."

Facing Elara, facing the Horde's handover of power, Lilith was speaking words straight from the heart.

"But you're different—strong in gift, sharp and decisive, with your daddy's glorious bloodline running in you besides. No one will question you, and no one will dare cross you. From now on, your every move stands for the Horde's will, and the direction your eyes turn is where the people's blades point."

Lilith knew well that her own holding of power and Elara's—even the holding of power by Orion's other children—did not mean the same thing. Hers was borrowed weight, the fox playing the tiger; everyone understood her power came from Orion. Elara was otherwise. If she held power, the power came from her own self.

"Thank you, Mama." Elara gripped the comb tight, the corners of her mouth lifting, the corners of her eyes flying up, her gaze brimming with pride and confidence. She knew well this was an entrustment from Lilith. The comb in her hand was the token of the handover of power.

"Silly child. Between mother and daughter, where's the sense in thanks and ceremony?" Lilith looked at Elara with tender love and reached out to smooth the dangling hairpin atop her head. The Stoneheart Horde had nothing like the thing; it had come in from other races after the great mingling of peoples. Elara had disliked wearing it before, but now she'd taken to it—a sign of a temper grown mature, and Lilith was well pleased.

"Your imperial robe is finished sewing—the peak work of every tailor and craftsman in the Horde, their skills brought together. It's sure to hold a surprise or two for you. Want to go try it on?" Something came to Lilith, and she pointed toward the palace where Elara lived; by now the robe should have been delivered to the little one's chambers.

"Yes—I'll go try it right now." Elara's eyes lit, and she hugged Lilith again, then went tearing back to her own grounds like a child let loose.

Watching Elara's retreating back, then looking at herself mirrored in the magic mirror before her, Lilith smoothed her hair, struck by an absurd notion that she was, step by step, growing old.

"Growing up doesn't just mean getting bigger. It means getting older too. The taste of power passing into someone else's hands again—it doesn't sit well, does it, my dear, foolish, innocent little sister?" The Succubus Witch Queen Delilah stepped out of the dark behind the curtain; to her, Lilith's chambers were her own chambers. With her mouth shut and dressed the same, no one but Orion could truly tell her and Lilith apart.

"I thought you'd hole up in that tavern forever, too ashamed to show your face." It was a riposte, but Lilith's tone carried no barb at all. She looked at Delilah, her twin sister—long years of Abyssal experience had lent this sister an added weight, a mystery and a killing edge.

"Not ashamed to show my face. There's just no point. This isn't my ground." Saying it, Delilah added a line in her own mind: My ground is the Abyss—there I'm the principal wife.

"Well—have I grown old?" Delilah came to Lilith's side and sat down shoulder to shoulder, showing off her big waves of hair while looking the pair of sisters in the magic mirror over closely. The two of them in the mirror, splendid as ever, beautiful past all matching.

"Whether you've grown old, I couldn't say. All I know is, if I can't make demigod, sooner or later I'll die, lose the standing of Orion's wife, leave Orion forever. Setting down power, handing off responsibility—for me, it's a load lifted off. At last I can throw myself wholly into cultivation, into chasing Orion's steps." Delilah turned to look at Lilith. Was she speaking of herself, or of Lilith? Who could say.

"Heh. To have come round to that—it's not too late." Delilah reached out and tipped a single finger under Lilith's flawless chin, a touch flippant. Truth be told, through these days while Lilith bore the heavy charge of the Stoneheart Horde, Delilah had been off in the Abyssal World cultivating in silence, and her strength outran Lilith's. With every kind of resource in her Abyssal holdings free for the taking, Delilah's power had long since reached the peak of the Archlord tier. And yet Delilah was nothing like Caelus or Elara. Peak Archlord all the same, the demigod realm so close at hand was, to her, beyond all reach. Even with demigod-tier Banshee Crystals in hand, Delilah still couldn't lay a finger on the threshold of demigod. As it was with Delilah, so with the lower-strength Lilith.

"If there's truly no way, we'll go to Orion's Divine Kingdom and be god-servants. We're waiting on him either way—no difference. And if that still won't do, then we'll have Orion turn us into Skeletal Knights, and go campaigning through other worlds against alien races together, pushing the borders out for Pallas." Talking on and on, the eager Delilah turned low by degrees. The demigod realm was like a natural chasm, holding the likes of them far off, walled below the ninth heaven. "Come to it, it's us who've dragged Pallas down. If our gift were fine enough, our people great enough, he'd have a strong mother-clan behind him—how would he have ended up stuck standing watch on the Bastion Wall?"

In the whole Stoneheart Horde, the one who most wished Pallas to inherit the throne wasn't Lilith, and wasn't Orion—it was Delilah. Whether out of the debt she felt to her sister Lilith, or worry for the Succubus race, or doting on her own nephew, Delilah was the one who cared most for Pallas, who most longed to see him take the helm of the Stoneheart Horde. To that end, in the open and in the shadows both, Delilah had been working to suppress the factions that had thrown in with Orion's other children.

"Orion's bloodline long since blanketed the Succubus mark we left on Pallas. The child's attainments, at least for now, have nothing to do with our gift." Lilith fixed on Delilah in the magic mirror. As twins, they'd seldom been on easy terms—most of the time it was rivalry and infighting—and a chance to watch her sister this close was rare in the extreme.

"As I see it, Pallas truly isn't ready yet. Hand the Stoneheart Horde to him now and he'd be easily led astray, go soft over a woman, be moved to pity by the people's playacting—and lose the Horde more of its interests for it."