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

by J. Gibson

  “How much farther, Knight Captain?” asked the woman called Mallum on an evening long into their travel, a number of days and nights which had carried them many miles.

  “Approximately seven miles, Archbishop.” Knight Captain Helotta Bashek’s decorated plate armor gleamed so silver and clear that it looked almost white.

  Athenne did not speak a word.

  None of the paladins or archbishops had thus far acknowledged the Saints directly.

  Uldyr, Bhathric, Eclih, and even Aitrix, had been silent as the tomb for the duration of the journey.

  Bhathric kept sending Athenne glances, as if she wanted to speak to her, but dared not.

  The mane of Aitrix’s horse had absorbed the half-elf’s gaze for most of the trip. Uldyr admired the horizon, stone-faced. Eclih looked around rarely, but otherwise expressed no obvious emotion beyond boredom.

  “We’re all our own heroes.” The archbishop named Sangrey peered at them over her shoulder while riding one evening. “Though ‘tis trite to say, no one thinks themselves the villains of their life, but there is such a thing as good and such a thing as bad. Whether something or someone does against one’s liking defines what is bad, and what is wrong is whether something or someone does against one’s will. Unless, of course, these should occur in the name of good, in retribution of what is bad and what is wrong. Do you see?”

  “We are bad and wrong, you are good and right,” Aitrix replied for herself and the rest of the Saints. “We are the villains. You are the heroes. All well, all tedious.”

  “You think yourself the hero, after you murdered so many innocents?” Mallum said.

  “I've done no bad or wrong that your lot haven’t. Killing in the name of my cause is no different than slaying for yours, except you claim your All-Mother as an ultimate authority in your support. Should I have asked you politely to undo your warding of the Aether? Would you have agreed to reverse your mistakes?” Perturbation befell Aitrix again. “Peacefulness does nothing to help the many who suffer at the Aether’s limitation—those who submit from the teachings of their youth and can’t tell the difference between right and wrong, or know only one of either. I could complain of your abuses toward me, your efforts to butcher my friends by hire of the Forgebrand Company, murderous, raping, thieving daggerhands. There should be no rule or law which prohibits pointing out the errors of others, or which disallows religious dissent. Access to the Aether is a natural right, and its restriction is a mistake. The only ones who disagree are those who prefer making such mistakes.”

  “Enough,” Sangrey ordered.

  “Strike me down, then. What I say is the bare truth. There is no justification for disallowing someone to point out the fault of others. How I behave is needed to deal with the many lies, fabrications, myths, delusions, obstacles, timewasters, obfuscators, and charlatans that stay and run in any large group of people, here and everywhere else in the world. Forbidding dissent, where true and required to discourage someone willfully wrong, hurts and hinders all of us—the very nature of truth. You justify arresting and threatening me with death for doing what you have done by your might and station, not by rightness and fact. I do not offend unless I have been offended, more. You call me mad because I am sensitive to what people say and do, when others are not. You think I've made a mistake, when it is you who made the mistake, and I know better.”

  Sangrey scoffed. “Your self-importance is without bound.”

  “I am self-important.” Aitrix did not relent. “I can't and mustn't let people be wrong. I can't and mustn't let people do and say whatever they want or like by virtue of their birth and happenstance success or power. There are more important truths, rights, and needs than those of which you few have thought.”

  The archbishop they called Bardot Dred broke in: “We have allowed your deluded ramble.” Her large grey eyes, like the gaze of a mad insect, fixed on Aitrix, as sharp as daggers in their shelter of black hair and dark skin. “Be quiet now, or the chevaliers will quiet you.”

  Knight Captain Bashek changed the subject. “We’re not headed directly to Imbredon, keep in mind. We’re on to the territory between Erlan, Ghora, and Imbredon. For the inclusion of you,” she addressed the Saints, “‘tis our hope that, if a horde of reanimates marches on the city, we can intercept it.”

  A horde of reanimates.

  They were off to fight an army of the dead, and Athenne, along with Aitrix and the others, would be fodder. Either their abilities would allow them to assist the cause to victory—Aitrix, in particular—or they would die. Athenne expected the archbishops and the knight captain had an escape plan for themselves.

  In the distance, a glowing light appeared, wavering in oranges and reds, rolling from the horizon.

  “Imbredon burns,” Bashek said.

  Stillness crept over the air, silencing the world in every direction. The temperature dropped. A heaving, consuming darkness blotted out the stars and moons above.

  Fog enveloped them.

  A hiss and dull ringing writhed in flight.

  The knight captain raised her lance. She called in a voice more commanding than any Athenne had heard: “Draw, sisters and brothers! The Undeath comes to claim and keep! If many of us die, let us be enough, not to fail our Mother’s quest! If we should live, the fewer, the greater the spoils of glory!”

  Those behind them cheered, a unified roar.

  The drummer’s march and flaghands at the rear of the host began their chant and song, to drown out the hissing and wicked whispers of the Undeath. Their thunderous beat, thump by thump, swelled with such intensity that even Athenne’s resolve increased by every rhythmic burst. The show of the march and the drums became as a mighty storm upon the ground and swept up their morale.

  Bashek glanced back. “Be vigilant!”

  A sinister wind blew through them, ruffling Athenne’s brown hair around her face.

  As she wiped it away, a sea of screams arose.

  The fire that had flowed in her turned to ice. Their approach halted. Thousands of paladins shrieked in horrific chorus and then were soundless, flanked by an invisible enemy, until the drumming ceased as well.

  Those at the rear seemed gone, swallowed by the frigid fog, so thick she could hardly see. The dark power had not taken the cavalry before them yet, and their horses panicked. They ran in every direction, frantic and nearly throwing Athenne from her mount as they brushed by, jerking her to and fro.

  “We are in an ambush!” she heard the knight captain shout.

  The omnidirectional hissing grew louder, as did the ringing in her ears. Another thundering ascended, feet at a run. Many. In the mist, the voices of Bhathric, Aitrix, and others were casting. A material shielding spell, she thought. Athenne incanted, hoping to aid in the conjuration. Her voice wavered.

  Before they completed the spell, the sound of reanimates came upon them. The fog lifted. She accounted for all of the archbishops, her friends, the knight captain, but not the magister. None of them knew where to look. There were remaining paladins, but what attacked their lot had slain many of them or pulled them into the mist. Athenne drew the shortsword the Ennead had outfitted her with.

  “Do you know how to use that?” a chevalier on horseback at her right asked, rotating and alert.

  “In theory.”

  A power unseen jerked the paladin from her saddle into the white wall behind her.

  Athenne’s horse reared back, startled, but she managed to hold on and quiet it.

  I am going to die.

  Their group fell toward Imbredon until Athenne’s eyes rolled skyward to find them within the city, at the edge. The smog had almost dissipated. Around twenty chevaliers remained. On one side of their group were reanimates by the dozens or hundreds, twitching and hissing in eerie concurrence, as if a single creature in a mass. At their other side, a droning pitch climbed until she had to cover her ears.

  They turned to behold the silhouette of a man, or being, near black against a backdrop of bu
rning city, fires licking and billowing in every direction.

  “A necromancer,” Aitrix said.

  The necromancer did not speak, but cast without incanting or signing, at the raise of its hand. A blue ribbon of fire tore through the air, squealing as it ripped past her, so close she felt its heat. Athenne could not see where it had gone, for its light caused her to cover her face, but she knew before she saw.

  Bhathric screamed a terrible scream, one only a terrible loss could haul from the throat. Eclih fell from his horse. Bhathric had descended from her mount to catch him, and she did. She held him in her arms as a parent cuddled a newborn babe. Tears streamed down her face as she clutched his head to her chest.

  She lay him gently on the ground and stood, turning toward the necromancer. Her blade drawn from its sheath, she began in the creature’s direction. Uldyr brought his steed into her path.

  “Bhathric!” he called.

  “I must!” Her voice sounded thick.

  The sequence felt as a dream to Athenne, as though she had drifted from her body and watched the events unfold around her. Her eyes ambled across the faces of the few remaining. Horror, confusion, shock, dismay, anger; an array of emotions so varied, and so much the same. Odd detachment embodied her own feeling.

  Her sight rested on Aitrix, who appeared bewildered.

  The world moved as if slowed by an unnatural energy.

  “We are going to die here,” Aitrix said. “We cannot defeat a necromancer.” Before any of them had time to react, Aitrix signed a relocation spell and vanished, in defiance of the limitations of her lunar tears, which burst into rays of showering orange light as she disappeared, sprinkling to the ground as smoldering embers from a hearth. She had abandoned them. Betrayed them.

  The necromancer released a noise like a thousand voices.

  Athenne felt nauseated.

  Reanimates swarmed them, and the chevaliers fought with great urgency, as did the rest of them. In the lingering fog and night, Athenne could hardly make out who clashed for which side, for the felled paladins from their host reanimated almost as quickly as they dropped. Those left alive stormed over the field in a furious current.

  As the chevaliers came across the cobblestones of Imbredon, the reanimates scattered them like clouds of disturbed dust. Feet from Athenne, one reanimate drew back a poleaxe, and with precision, struck a paladin between her helm, mail, and cuirass. The power of the weapon’s cleave swept her head from her shoulders. Her body crumpled to the ground.

  Athenne gasped. The reanimate clamored in its animalistic howl, driven toward her at a run until Sangrey destroyed it with a bolt of fire. Their eyes crossed, and Sangrey pivoted away.

  The chevaliers perished one after another.

  Uldyr came around to her. “I shall not let you die.” He raised his steel and slashed at any reanimates that neared. With damage to their brains, the risen seemed to lose their strength. Bits and gruesome chunks of skull and meaty innards, rotten and fresh, sprayed around them.

  The horde of reanimates backed away again and circled them, facing in at every angle.

  They were in the eye of it; a ghastly, hateful tempest.

  “What do we do?” Bhathric asked.

  With a few more sweeping blows and stabbing thrusts, the reanimates overcame the last of the living paladins. Not long after they fell, they raised anew, and joined in the surrounding rows.

  Uldyr turned to her. “Athenne—”

  Out of the darkness hurled a javelin. The tip of it burst through Uldyr’s face, drenching Athenne in his blood, teeth, and flesh. Exiting through his mouth, tongue split asunder, the point pulled him toward the ground.

  As Uldyr plunged from his saddle, Athenne did not scream as Bhathric had when Eclih struck the stones. She hardly moved or breathed. The world around her dissolved for that moment, however long it lasted.

  She did not wrench her face from his body, lying prone in undignified death. Terror struck, numbed, arrested her. She felt voided. A sound escaped her lips, some noise like a whimper.

  This is not real.

  A javelin flew past her head, so close it ripped the edges of her hair, but she did not react.

  Bhathric took her face in her hands and spoke, a muffled blur of slurring words she did not comprehend.

  Athenne had lost her horse, but when? She did not know.

  She did not weep, though tears fell from her eyes and rolled over Bhathric’s fingers.

  Bhathric pulled her nearer. “Athenne!” she heard her say. Athenne strained to listen, with all of her concentration, striving for clarity in the swirling chaos. “We have to fight, Athenne!” Bhathric cried.

  Athenne felt herself falling, but Bhathric kept her upright. She wanted to draw away and let the horde devour her. Uldyr had died, her truest friend. She could not go on without him. A crippling lament and fatigue gripped her. Her life had no further purpose. She had surrendered it long ago.

  Bhathric released her. “She’s no use!”

  The archbishops looked from Bhathric to Athenne.

  Athenne watched the mass, who did not approach, but continued spinning around them. She looked to the necromancer, who stood beyond the circling figures. Its puppets.

  Why does it wait?

  Why does it not kill us now?

  A light erupted.

  Athenne masked her face in reflex.

  Mallum had unleashed a powerful spell and annihilated many of the reanimates, dispersing portions of their bodies in bloody shreds and tattered chunks. The pungency singed Athenne’s nostrils.

  Dred cast a barrier around them next. “This will not hold for long!” Expanding, the shimmering dome of white energy, pure Aether made visible, turned a few of the ensorcelled corpses to ash in violent, shrieking explosions.

  “We must retreat.” Sangrey indicated for them to draw toward the center of the barrier.

  Athenne and Bhathric made their way, regarding Uldyr and Eclih with a sense of finality.

  Bhathric no doubt reeled as she did, but managed to handle it with greater strength.

  They admired one another, Bhathric’s eyes glistening in the soft light of the sphere, Athenne’s face deadpan and undoubtedly pale. She was surprised she had not yet collapsed.

  Will they take us with them, or leave us to die?

  She imagined the archbishops would depart without them. Their shield would fall. The reanimates would converge, rip them apart. They would perish, and after, travel to Eophianon for their bout of eternal torment, or be reborn as a share of the Undeath; this carrying, malevolent force like a wave.

  The ichor that swallows the world.

  Sangrey incanted, her eyes half shut.

  The air and sky, the world around Athenne, had become foreign. Her beating heart, she felt, and yet it did not seem as hers. She clutched her chest, heavy with severance, separation, isolation. With the dread of abandonment, she scanned the glowing eyes of the dead, burning like stars against the darkness. Nothing to hope for remained but the swiftest release.

  Our Mother shall have no place for me. That is my fate.

  If Athenne had any spirit left, it expired in her that instant. She had erred, in all that she had done. Tired of embracing, reflecting, thinking of the past, she drowned in the misery of it. Mother, please take me. Pull me from this wicked shell. I am feeble, weak, rancid to the core. My heart collapses. Take me, or throw me away!

  Sangrey’s spell erupted, and she lost all sight, only for light to rush in soon after.

  They were elsewhere, a place open to the air. Hundreds of seats surrounded a central dais. Behind the platform sat a throne with a desk in front of it, numerous candlesticks at its sides. Even in her daze and stupor, she recognized this location, though she had never seen it herself. They had arrived at the Iron Court in the Imperial Palace.

  Still half-absent, she examined the area. All four of the archbishops had survived, as had the knight captain and Bhathric. They had left the bodies of Uldyr and Eclih behind.r />
  Athenne turned toward Sangrey, still on her horse. “Why?”

  Sangrey wiped blood from her nose. “Why, what?”

  “Why save us?” Athenne’s voice crept, breathy and frail.

  “To have left you to such a miserable fate at the hands of underlings of the God of the Dead would have been a grave injustice against daughters of the All-Mother. Misguided as you are, I am not so cruel.”

  She wished she had a moment with Uldyr to say farewell. The sole memory at the fore of her mind was the gruesome image of the javelin exploding through his face. He had gone forever. She wandered alone in the world again. A closeness and kinship denied her for most of her life, dissolved in an instant.

  Athenne looked away from Sangrey without further acknowledgment. She wanted to weep and grieve and mourn their losses, but she could not. She felt hollowed, ashamed that she had lived, and more so, a broiling hatred for Aitrix, who had ruined her, fractured all of them, and left without a trace.

  Aitrix could have taken them with her, yet she had deserted them. A flurry of emotions ripped through Athenne, then dissipated. She fell beyond them, deprived of lasting sensation.

  Gazing up to the dark sky, she scoured the moons, the stars, the rings. She imagined herself in a field somewhere, the cool breeze washing over her. Her mind envisioned Uldyr at her side, and Bhathric and Eclih, talking, laughing, reminiscing, away from Aitrix and her machinations and self-interested schemes.

  Athenne wished she could feel more. She had thrown away her life, and she had gotten what she deserved. Even so, one feeling, one thought, simmered beneath the surface.

  She saw her younger self. Bright, kind, filled with joy. Running through woodlands and streams, at peace with nature, overflowing with potential. Unsullied, unmarked, worthy as any girl had been. Ambitious, loving, hopeful. Gone too soon, before her time. So much lost, so quickly, to lead her to this place.