Sailor Mercury's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Saturn stayed where Mercury left her, still as carved stone. Weldon walked beside Mercury through the palace gardens, his jaw tight. "You said soon," he reminded her. Mercury pressed a luminous crystal seal into his palm, her sigil shining across its face. "Today," she said. "Stand at the petition stone. She will come." Weldon stepped onto the stone marker at the garden's edge. Carved channels lit under his boots. He held the seal up and waited. Mercury watched from the colonnade, one hand resting on a swirling glass sphere that glowed with captured starlight. She tilted it. The Queen's chambers brightened inside the glass. Queen Serenity came alone. Her white robes did not stir the grass. She studied Weldon a long moment. "You carry her seal," she said. "Speak." Weldon did not kneel. "My kingdom is dying. I am not the man for this room. I know that. But there is no one else coming." He held the seal steady. "I am asking for help. Not rescue. Help." The Queen was quiet. Then she lifted her hand and touched his brow. Light poured down his arms, gold threading through the dark sigils on his coat. "I cannot send an army," she said. "I can give you what I gave them. Stand as a senshi. Carry it home." Weldon's breath caught. The seal in his hand cracked clean in two. Mercury watched the gold settle into him through the orb. Her face did not move. The Queen had just handed her conspirator a senshi's power — and never once asked who had sent him. Mercury closed her hand around the glass. One more crack. One more piece in place.