The Blackened Yonder: Planar Lost: Book One (Planar Lost (Standard Edition) 1)

by J. Gibson

  “What is my destiny?” Aitrix’s voice sparked with anger. “To strike with impunity.” A glow enveloped her as the spell she signed took shape, generating a low squealing that trilled in Athenne’s ears. “To wield the Aether at my whim.” Aitrix stepped toward Delacroix, her brow furrowed, her red eyes smoldering. “To serve not the middling minds of this craven institution, but to live by my own will.” The end of her words became a roar. A pillar of fire rose up from the ground behind her, as if from the throat of the god Vysyn himself. Their faces lit as the orange of the flames made the walls and banisters glow like lightning. The spell spat embers in every direction until all the torches of the hall burned, and swam and wavered in the air as though an extension of Aitrix herself.

  Delacroix began a conjuration of her own. As she did, two other women emerged on her end of the room. Archbishops, by their manner of dress, similar to Delacroix.

  “You have been gifted a great power.” With her hands, Delacroix worked material magic which sliced at the pillar of fire through invisible bursts, fighting to snuff it out, causing the flames to jerk and quiver. “You could have made for yourself a profound future.”

  Aitrix’s blaze rose higher and arced in Delacroix’s direction, tentacles of fire licking and groping at the floor, spewing cinder. Athenne squinted against the light.

  “You have failed to seize it,” Delacroix concluded.

  The other two who had entered signed.

  Aitrix moved toward Delacroix, the flaring cyclone rolling with her, maintaining the dull shriek in the air caused by the strained magic. The archbishops jabbed at the spell from every side, battering, beating, and reducing it only for it to ripple to life anew as Aitrix held her hand seal.

  “I grew up differently, alone in my head.” Each of Aitrix’s words bit and dripped with fury and contempt. “I opposed the mistakes of those who thought themselves my betters, to be censured and ignored.”

  The flames twisted over the ground, scorching through the bodies of fallen deacons and reducing them to ash. “Nearly everyone offends me, but there are those who will not or cannot learn, who are proud and blatant of their flaws and defects. They cluster together so that they may thrive, not see life otherwise, be free of scrutiny, waste time and resources. The livelihood of any group is a threat to any other not above it, wherefore the world is finite.”

  Swirling fire leapt at Delacroix, but she deflected it.

  “You long for a compromise that ends in your favor, that does not require me to kill every last one of you. Yet compromise cannot be the solution, for the world is compromise. The solution must be to kill off every one of you. Your deaths shall relieve the burden on the well-minded and ensure the liberty of the Aether, so that those such as myself may forge the fates that we desire.”

  Aitrix stopped and elevated her arms at her sides. “Someone of middling brains may not understand my feud, but if you destroy moths, ants, vermin, and other offensive, detrimental intruders, then you already stand like-minded, and there is nothing left to discuss!” She drew her arms back and directed them forward. The pillar of flame behind her came up from the floor and drove toward Delacroix in the air, as a serpent gliding through water.

  Fire divided around Delacroix, whirling and fluttering. The Archbishop vocalized. Orange and red flames flickered in rainbowed shades. A screech so loud came that Athenne worried her ears might bleed. Aitrix vocalized in kind, in an effort to sustain her spell against Delacroix’s interference.

  Aitrix had overestimated herself, and it seemed the archbishops had allowed her to. As quickly as her pillar of fire had manifested, a force squeezed and dispelled it with a fading whimper. Cinders of purple, blue, and green rained down and flew up. In union, the archbishops conjured a material compulsion which lifted Aitrix from the ground.

  Athenne suffered to breathe or move. Her lungs burned. The room froze, as though the archbishops had suspended it too. Delacroix declined her hand, conducting the incantation, setting the space into motion again.

  Aitrix fell. The force knocked the wind from her. She wheezed and sputtered in short, labored breaths. Her back and neck arched, fingers and hands twisted beside her head, legs tense and shaking. She groaned and strained to roll over, subdued by the magic of the archbishops.

  “Athenne!” Aitrix snarled as she managed the air, red gaze set firmly on her, two drops like boiling blood in milky face, framed in shadowed angles. “Athenne! Kill them!” She gasped at the ends of her words, in a hoarse, guttural tempest. “What are you waiting for, you stupid bitch! Do it, now!”

  “I—” Athenne stammered, paralyzed, entranced.

  “Bhathric!” Aitrix failed to push herself up. “Eclih!” She growled and exerted until her face flushed.

  Aitrix did not call out for Uldyr.

  “It seems we’ve deprived her of her senses,” remarked one of the archbishops, hinting pity.

  The archbishops closed in, as did the paladins.

  “This is she, laid bare.” Delacroix looked to Athenne. “You may try to kill us as she commands, if you like.”

  Fingers tightened around Athenne’s upper arms.

  They had lost their cause.

  The archbishops head defeated Aitrix.

  In the wake of that display, Athenne could no longer follow the Saints. Uldyr, if he lived, would have to respect her wish. He had explained to her, as had Bhathric, Aitrix’s life and the source of her convictions. Understandable as her hurt and anger were, Aitrix could not be her leader. Not after this.

  Delacroix approached, and Athenne kept her eyes down.

  “Exploitative and audacious, as Kravae has always been, striking when we were otherwise preoccupied. Fellow members of your Saints, as you call yourselves, have slaughtered dozens of Imperial citizens, not merely deacons. Women, men, children, butchered in the streets—murdered as a distraction.” Delacroix’s pointer and thumb cupped Athenne’s chin and brought her head up. Their gazes linked. “Many of your comrades shall perish shortly. You and the rest of greater import will be brought to our chamber so that we may decide on your fates.”

  Behind Delacroix, inquisitors constrained Aitrix, with far more care and precaution than they had assigned to Athenne. They banded Aitrix’s arms behind her back from the wrists to the shoulder blades, with the palms of her hands faced apart. A muzzle caged her mouth. She did not struggle or resist.

  The inquisitors took Athenne with haste. She beheld the bloodied faces and garb of the deacons on the ground, some indiscernible from the gashes about them, more vicious than any animal’s markings. The flames had scorched others beyond recognition, a burning magic that turned flesh to ash on contact, but did not feel hot through the air.

  Athenne had gazed into the black heart of a monster. It awed her, rendered her speechless. Her silence maintained as her agony rose. She fixed her eyes on the empty space between the paladins walking in front of her as they made their way down a torchlit hall, wishing to no avail that she could liquify and reappear somewhere else. In the past, in the woodlands, even in Ghora. The present concerned her less than the series of occasions and events which had preceded and attended it.

  In her mind, Athenne saw herself, younger and smiling, walking through a meadow, peering to a blue, sun-kissed sky. Her hand raised in the air to play at the clouds, well out of reach. All who had known her, her world mother, her instructors, her childhood friends, would be as astounded by her current predicament and insensibility to the obviousness of her impending fate as Athenne was to find herself there, even after months of gathering, planning, traveling, reinforcing, and doing. Such a powerful dejection accompanied these musings that she could no longer weep. She had died in the truest sense, save her lingering pulse and shallow, aching breaths.

  When they arrived at the chamber, which Athenne presumed to be the Ennead council room, Eclih, Bhathric, and Uldyr met her sight. Her insides fluttered. At least they were still alive. He had lived. If the four of them must die, that they would do so tog
ether provided her with a feeble solace. As Bhathric had promised, they had not forced Athenne to kill anyone. The rest of them had done the slaying for her. She was their greatest failure.

  The inquisitors pushed them to their knees before nine archbishops, who stood behind a table and gazed upon the woebegone bunch with ominous expressions. One man at their center, eight women at his sides. The man’s stare pierced as two needles. Athenne could not look up as they examined and dissected her, shattered her. With the four in their row, Aitrix the most restrained, the inquisitors in the chamber lined up at their backs.

  “Fiends,” the man began.

  The Vicar. Breiman Umbra.

  He uttered with authority, and admonishment: “How dare you come into this city, kill our people?” His voice grew louder and nearer every few words as he walked around the table.

  “Beasts. Witches. Warlocks. ‘Tis all the same. The four of you have chosen this wayward thing as your helm.” Umbra signaled toward Aitrix. “She has led you to the precipice of a great fall.”

  “Their members have taken the lives of many this day,” said another voice. A woman. “Innocents dashed about the cobbles with their throats cut.” An interval passed. Even the silence disapproved. “They should be lucky not to spend the rest of their miserable lives tortured in the cells.”

  “We would be quite alike then,” Bhathric said.

  Athenne’s head rose as the woman stormed around the table, grabbed Bhathric by the collar, and jerked her to her feet. The woman’s grey eyes watered. “My name is Archbishop Aris Crane. I want you to know that.” Her chin quivered as she struggled to speak. Hair like fire fluttered around her face. “My daughter.” Crane’s face stopped inches from Bhathric’s, close enough that Bhathric was sure to feel the drops of spittle that bounded from the archbishop’s lips. “You killed my daughter in the street, seven-yeared. She was innocent. You murdered her!”

  “Aris—” Delacroix attempted, but Bhathric interrupted her.

  “I did not kill your daughter.” Bhathric looked at the woman in her eyes. “Neither did I witness her departure.”

  “You brought this on us!” Crane drew her arm back and struck Bhathric across the face. “You killed her the same as the one who swung the blade!”

  “Enough,” said Umbra softly.

  The archbishop released Bhathric and backed away.

  An inquisitor returned Bhathric to her knees.

  Crane retook her position behind the table, wiping the edges of her eyes with her thumbs.

  “I ought to permit her.” Umbra’s stare moved from Bhathric through the rest of them. “I ought to license the loved ones of each innocent murdered this day to punish you as they see fit, short of death. Dying would be too much a kindness, too simple and forgiving.” A slight and terrifying pleasure sparked across the Vicar’s face. “There is another solution for you, one to which we have already agreed.”

  CHAPTER XX: ACCORD

  Amun

  As the alternate Scribe Officiate, now the primary for practical purposes, Amun had observed many of the Ennead’s actions and important discussions. She had been in their company so long, especially the Archbishop Delacroix, that she had formed a unique perspective on their dealings, though she kept it quiet.

  The Ennead had at first believed the members of the Saints of Aetheria to be Mythos reapers, until the two whom Amun had reported for the murder of Garron confessed their affiliation after their apprehension. They did not reserve themselves in their admissions, but were bold and proud. One had exhibited pride, anyway.

  In the chamber well, they had assembled five individuals.

  “Before we continue, state your names and nations of origin for the record.” Archbishop Sangrey gestured toward Amun, exposing her by the acknowledgement. The poppy-red glare of the one in the center aimed at her. Aitrix Kravae, half-elven. “From left to right,” Sangrey added.

  The largest captive began: “I am Uldyr Friala, a citizen of Beihan, but not Beihanese.”

  “Obviously.” Archbishop Mortem rolled her eyes.

  “Athenne Zedd, Reneris.” The woman’s voice sank so low that Amun scarcely distinguished the words.

  Then spoke their leader, ungagged: “Aitrix Kravae.”

  “Formerly,” Delacroix interjected, her elbow rested on the table, her chin on her hand, “Aitrix Besogos, after her great uncle and his sister and their mother before them.”

  “Bhathric Ezeis.” This woman, the most defiant of the captured, save Kravae. She struck down one inquisitor in a melee and nearly slew another before capitulating.

  The last one sighed. “Eclih Phredran.” Amun had to examine the man with care, for she thought him elven at first. His green eyes and round ears betrayed his humanity.

  “You are charged in collective complicity with terrorism, murder in the first-degree, heresy, blasphemy, and apostasy. You have aimed to strike fear into the hearts of the Imperial common body, to turn them against the Church. You have murdered, not only members of this sacred order, but innocent members of the citizenry. You have participated in heresy, the spreading of doubt for the ends of promoting disorder and regression. You have practiced blasphemy, in open disdain of the All-Mother, for the ends of promoting disorder. You have participated in apostasy in each of these acts, and in particular, in your sedition and defection, and in the abandonment of your duties as children of Gohheia to maintain an inborn loyalty to Her.” Archbishop Sangrey paused and clasped her hands on the table in front of her. “Your leader will speak as representative for you. How do you plead?”

  Kravae’s head rose and met her gaze. “Guilty.” Her voice carried without fluctuation. “Although, fair folk are the children of Epaphael, so I’ve only half the duty.”

  Amun stifled a chuckle through her nose.

  “Do you know how we uncovered your plot, captured your underlings?” Sangrey said.

  “Couldn’t fathom.”

  “Our new issue of lunar tears, which you were evidently aware differed from their predecessors, are attached in permanence to the essence signature of their owner. This did not tell us the exact location of where you murdered our priest, as their accuracy decreases the further from this building that they are. They do, however, inform us whether the wearer is the intended user, and whether the user is alive or dead.”

  “We were monitoring your victim. That is how we knew that he had perished around Black Pass.” Delacroix’s eyes moved from Kravae to the one called Athenne. “That is how we were so quickly enlightened that his issued beads had re-entered the Priory after his death.”

  Kravae’s lids flared in mockery. “Fascinating.”

  “This is a serious matter,” the Vicar said, not one for fooling. “Whether you planned your attack so or not, and we suspect not after detailing the thinness of its conception, you have surely noted that we executed two Mythosian reapers in the square.” In the introductions, he had moved to his seat. Now he stood and came around the table once more. “Their immediate crimes were far less severe than your own, that we can prove. We had other suspicions, but on its face, their guilt lay in the lesser share of yours—heresy, blasphemy, apostasy. All manners of sacrilege born in submission to their death god.” He halted in front of Kravae. “We hanged them by their necks until they were dead. I would like to do the same to you.” His face remained without a flicker of emotion. “However, in this circumstance, as I stated earlier, executing you is not in our interest.”

  The group of captives remained quiet, even Kravae. Her eyes did not waver from those of the Vicar. If a look alone could strike one dead, he would have fallen.

  “There is a great Undeath sweeping the south. We suspect some relation between the event and Mythos. Those we have sent to investigate the issue have not fared well. Yet we cannot rest on the matter. Due to a secondary condition, rather than submit you to summary execution, we are willing to broker a deal.”

  The Vicar indicated toward Archbishop Crane. “Some of our members were by re
ason and right in objection. But through the wisdom of Archbishop Delacroix, we have come to recognize that you may aid us with your talents, and mitigate the risk to our own.” His gaze returned to Kravae. “Loath as we are to allow you to carry on, your gift is undeniable. If not for the cleverness of this council, you may well have bested us.”

  Kravae was impatient. “Arrive at a conclusion, if you will.”

  A thin-lipped smile came across the Vicar’s face, unnatural among his grim features. “Aid us in handling this Undeath, and you shall not hang. You and your ilk, this cabal of heathen dissidents, such as you are, will live. Far more than you deserve, we shall not only spare your lives, but we shall submit you to no more than five ages imprisonment in the cellars beneath the Priory. When you have served your sentences, we shall expel each of you from Imperial territory for all time, and any direct descendants after you. You shall neither return nor interfere with Imperial life in any manner, remote or proximal, foreign or domestic.”

  The five exchanged glances.

  This deal sounded undeniably charitable.

  “Allow us to reiterate your misdeeds,” Delacroix added. “Terrorism, murder, heresy, blasphemy, apostasy. We could have added further acts to the litany, but these were the grandest offenses. Two young women hanged before the common body for less than three of these. If not for your gifts, if not for this singular opportunity to redeem yourselves by assisting us in saving tens of thousands of lives, you would be hanging now.” Uncharacteristic indignation tinted her voice. “Aitrix Kravae, you have sullied the good name of your ancestry. You are a blight on all that your great uncle accomplished. ‘Twas not without a measure of disappointment that I suggested your expulsion from the academy so many ages ago. I had thought to give you a modicum of benefit this day. Then I witnessed you standing there among the slain in the hall.” She stood and walked around the table. Her hand pulled Kravae’s head up by the chin as she stopped in front of her. “Look at me when I speak to you.”