Nyptherion’s first secret was the promise of a heart’s desire. The seekers came to find the genii who lived in the red sands outside the city. They would go into the desert and hope the genii found their need delicious enough to be chosen and granted a wish. It was told that when the right conditions were met, the genii wielded the most powerful magic in the world. They could grant any wish, even undoing time itself—a power that was closed to even the Archdragon of Time. Athra reflected… no one who met a genie ever returned to the city, so even the goddess wasn’t sure if there was any truth to the rumors. Yet, hope alone was powerful enough to summon the world’s hopeless.
Hope is a drug. Once drunk it can never be forgotten, and without it we are empty.
Nyptherion’s second secret was about those who lived in the ring’s inner circle. It was rumored the women who lived there were so beautiful that from one gaze upon their face, a man would lose all will to leave the city. To protect the outsiders from the undeniable desire their faces ignited, the women veiled themselves so none could gaze upon their countenances. When they took husbands, it was said that even they were not allowed to look upon the faces of their own wives as they made love, so important it was to the priestesses of Nyptherion that their men’s free will be preserved. They were praised for their nobility by the outer ring dwellers, who revered them for their selfless desire to not reduce their husbands to adoring slavery. In fact, their beauty was so legendary that it was said that even women’s hearts would be turned, so enraptured they would lose all free will. And so, the women of Nyptherion kept themselves veiled to all.
Athra smiled to herself. She knew the real truth, and it was this secret that proved her most delicious triumph over the vile Malahkma. Athra had stolen their worship from the Goddess of Desire long ago.
The seekers and dwellers in the outer city circle gave Athra deference as she entered Nyptherion’s labyrinthine streets. They saw her completely shrouded beneath the veils of Nyptherion and mistook her for one of the priestesses. In the inner ring, however, they were not so easily deceived. A cluster of shrouded priestesses approached her, each of them looking at her from beneath the concealing mesh oval screen in the front of their veils.
“Who are you?” their leader asked. “You are not one of us.”
Athra responded with her metallic voice. “You are perceptive,” she stated. No need to lie. “I would speak with your hierophant. I need entry into the Celestial Temple.” That was the city’s third secret: the central palace held within its heart, a mystical bridge to the Celestial Temple, which existed in a pocket outside of Ahmbren’s place in Time.
For a moment, they didn’t answer, frozen in surprised silence. Finally, the leader said, “Come with us.”
The cluster of women led Athra through the ordered inner streets to the palace. The streets grew narrow, overshadowed by the tall buildings. Unlike the outer ring, the road surfaces had no stones or mortar, made of a continual surface, slightly soft and polished to a glossy black. Athra understood that this part of the city was living, the streets and buildings themselves organic, grown from the strange energies that connected the palace to the Celestial Temple. It was the same kind of magic that had once linked Artalon to countless worlds across the stars. Those shadowy paths tore at the fabric of reality and warped those which surrounded it. In Artalon’s final days—the first Artalon, ruled by darklings and destroyed by Archurion—it’d had similar streets of living shadow before its end.
No one challenged them as they entered the palace. The corridor descended into a downward spiral, a round, ribbed tunnel reminiscent of a throat. Air pushed over Athra’s robes in soft gusts as the tunnel inhaled and exhaled. Her metal skin, imbued by her divine magic, felt the hot moisture pushing its fingers beneath her veils and into the crevices of her armor-resin seams. It felt strangely seductive.
They stopped at a small antechamber. Its walls were stretched membranes of flesh between living bone ribbing. They glowed with an orange light, and she could see blood vessels pumping through their skin. A closed fleshy sphincter acted as a doorway at the far side of the room.
The women turned and surrounded her. “Within lies the holy of holies,” the leader of the small group stated. “Before you are permitted to see the High Priestess and her hierophant, there is one final test.”
“Remove your veils,” Athra commanded. “The goddess’s countenance will not harm me.”
Another pause of silence.
“You know our secrets,” the leader said. “You expected us to test you.”
“Yes,” Athra replied. “I know the truth of why you veil yourselves. Proceed, guardians of the Celestial Temple.”
The women removed their veils, revealing the faces of gorgons. They were human faces, save for the writhing masses of serpents that uncoiled from their heads where hair should have been, extending down to their shoulders and back. Thousands of gleaming serpent eyes gazed upon Athra. The women’s human eyes were captivating in their beauty, but the kaleidoscope patterns in their irises swirled in a maddening way that prevented anyone from focusing on them. Their lips were full and beautiful, and their eyebrows were like their heads, only made of much shorter, finer serpents only apparent if one looked closely enough.
They waited. When at first Athra didn’t move, the leader shrugged. “She failed,” she stated, with a certain note of bored disappointment. Then she gasped when Athra reached up to remove her own veil. Any mortal would have been turned to stone by meeting their gaze.
“Behold,” the goddess said, “I am Athra, Lady of Civilization, and protector of this city and your people.”
They looked into her crystal eyes. She sent out a surge through the Kairantheum that she knew they would feel. They were priestesses, devoted to the gods. They each shuddered and moaned in mystical ecstasy.
“Goddess!” they said and then knelt. “Forgive us. We did not know.”
“Rise,” Athra commanded. “I chose to be hidden, and you have fulfilled your charge to protect this most sacred of spaces from outsiders. You have preserved its secrets even through the God-King’s rule. You are my most favored of servants.”
They rose, and went to the door. The fleshy sphincter relaxed and opened wide enough for them to pass through. Each of the women removed the remainder of their clothing before entering. They were Malahkma’s people, and by design they found all crafted things distasteful, even painful. That they endured it to preserve and protect the secret of the city spoke to their devotion to Athra. Malahkma had twisted them from early humans in the dark beginnings before history, but fate—Nephyr—guided them away from the evil goddess. Athra adopted them, moved by an uncharacteristic display of compassion. They were an organic race, for even their buildings were living. They and their buildings existed in a symbiotic relationship, and even though they could not pursue crafting or technology, they were receptive to Athra’s essence when it came to art and philosophy. They didn’t make art, but grew it in their buildings through husbandry of flesh, membrane, and bone.
The priests and priestesses within were naked. They all had the same kaleidoscope eyes and serpentine hair. The men’s crowns had fewer serpents, only five thick pythons that wrapped and encircled their bodies and limbs. The men each had a sixth, shorter serpent growing between their legs in place of a phallus, curious heads snaking forward, flicking the air with forked tongues, and eyes staring at Athra as she entered. Their bodies were completely hairless.
Knowing their culture, she shed the remainder of her robes and revealed the construct’s crafted body. She felt their adoration at this gesture of unity, even as she sensed their stinging pain at the sight of a technological invention.
They recognized her for who she was and bowed.
A powerfully built man came forward.
“Lady Athra,” the hierophant greeted her. All his serpentine heads turned to face her. “We are ready to serve you.”
“I seek entrance to the temple,” she stated. “I know thi
s body causes you discomfort, so I do not intend to tarry here.”
“The discomfort of artifacts is a condition of our bodies, not our minds,” he stated. “Enduring it is a small price to pay in exchange for you liberating our ancestors from Malahkma. You gifted us with rational minds, showing us the fruits of compassion and honor. We are forever in your debt.”
He embraced her. All of his serpents hissed softly and turned away from the touch of her metallic skin. She knew it caused him pain, but she allowed him the freedom of his expression, and she briefly returned his gesture. His offering of pain filled her with delight, and for a moment she wanted to extend the embrace and drink in his worship. Instead, she stepped away from him.
“Your sacrifice is appreciated,” she said, “but I do not wish for your pain.”
Malahkma had made them a twisted people, but their hearts had broken free of her designs. They were monstrous to the outside world, but Athra only saw beauty in them. They were good, but at the same time, nothing about them was safe. They had the will to be dangerous to mortals who intruded where they should not go.
The hierophant beckoned for her to follow. At the center of the chamber lay a bed of oyster-hued flesh cradling a flat pearl platform. Athra stepped onto the disc, and a pillar of light rose from the ground around her feet. The gorgon chamber dissolved before her eyes.
Athra stood on a flat glass disc floating through the black of space. Tiny glass spheres hung suspended at various points over the platform, each representing a world. At one point, Artalon had connected to all of these through shadow-spun pathways, using the element of Dark to bind worlds together. The linking of worlds through shadow had been Klrain’s design, intended to destabilize the planet of Ahmbren enough to jar him out from the dragonsleep prison imposed by his siblings. The Black Dragon had been the greatest threat the gods had ever faced. Had he succeeded, he would have devoured their worshippers, and the river of faith would have dried up. The gods would have wasted away into nothingness.
Now, all the glass orbs were dark, save for the blue jewel in the center. That was Ahmbren, at least as it was represented in this place. With the dark bridges lost, the temple had also lost its connection to them, and the gods could no longer sense the other worlds. They would remain dark until the Kairantheum again stretched between the stars.
Surrounding the glass disc, floating suspended, were oval rings made of crystal. There was one for every god, each ring framing the god’s constellation. Only Malahkma’s ring showed a starless void behind it. She was locked deep in the bowels of the Abyss, and her light was not permitted to shine on the world of Ahmbren floating in the temple’s center.
Athra appeared as she expected in front of her own constellation. This place, existing outside Ahmbren’s space-time, allowed the gods to manifest and speak with minimal expenditure of their hoarded faith energy. It was a fabrication of dreams, similar in nature to the lost Otherworld. In this space, Athra did not wear the construct’s body. Athra’s Jewel lay resting behind in the gorgon’s lair, waiting for her return. Here, she appeared as a human woman, hair pulled back into a bun and wearing a neatly tucked white toga. She held a spear in her right arm, and a bronze helm rested on her head from ages past.
One by one the gods answered her call, all those who could. Some were still too weak from lack of worship during the God-King’s reign. Sestra’s spidery form glimmered for a moment, trying to answer her summons but then faded. That was fine enough with Athra. She had never liked Sestra. Most of the other gods didn’t even have Sestra’s level of strength. There were some, however, who had managed to keep worshippers during the God-King’s reign. One by one, they appeared.
Geala, Lady of Seas and Trade, was the first to arrive. Instead of her usual voluptuous human form, she wore the body of a willowy ratling with ocean-green fur, but twice as tall. Athra raised an eyebrow, but Geala just shrugged. “Ratlings gave me strength,” she said.
“They don’t worship the gods,” Athra remarked. Well, other than Rajamin. Poor Rajamin.
“No, but they kept trade alive in the world.”
Athra nodded. She already knew that, but they had a habit of enacting pleasantries when they met. It made their councils smoother.
Next came Voldun, God of War. As always, he appeared as a muscled orc, twice as large as any real orc warrior, riding a horse twice as large as any real horse. He glowered fiercely with beady eyes over great tusks, twice as long and sharp as any real orc tusk. Size mattered to him.
“What is it, Athra?” he growled. “My tribes are slaughtering each other for the right to make a seelie handmaiden—who rose from the dirt as a slave—into their tribal queen.” He chuckled. “And she instigated it. A woman after my own heart. What’s so important that you draw me away from that?”
“Our freedom,” Athra said. “But wait for the rest to arrive.”
Voldun snorted. “Those that can. I survived Karanos’ Artalon just fine. You are all weak.”
“You only survived,” Athra pointed out, “because neither Aaron—Karanos—nor Valkrage cared enough to conquer your orc tribes. Your worshippers were too undisciplined to be any use to them. Were it not for that, you would have fallen before Karanos-Reborn just as the rest of us did.”
Voldun snorted again, but he had no retort. Athra hid her smugness. She would need him most of all.
Serin’s stars shone, but the elven God of Magic did not make an appearance. She felt his mind faintly present, but he was too weak to manifest even here. He had always put too much stock in elves, she thought. Elves spent more time on their magic than worshipping—
—because their ancestors built the Kairantheum.
The realization struck her for a moment. The high elves today no longer remembered building the matrix of divine space-time. Or if they did, it was a secret limited only to their highest leaders. But it made sense why religion had never caught on in the sidhe cities.
Poor Serin.
Lorum suffered similar struggles. His followers were wizards and historians, and Aaron’s Church had almost wiped his worship out entirely with the destruction of libraries and the banishment of wizards.
Athra’s son, Keruhn the Consoler, Lord of the Hunt and the Harvest, appeared. He wore a kindly face, despite his missing left eye, and had stag horns sprouting from his forehead. Just as Rin was Nature’s Goddess, Keruhn had been called Nature’s God. The two of them together were the masculine and feminine currents of life, and both were wed to Soorleyn, who moved her lunar affections between them with the rising and falling of the tides. Keruhn frowned darkly when Yamosh emerged on the opposite side of the disc. Yamosh winked at Athra and stood patiently.
Soorleyn the Moon Goddess and Rin, Lady of Nature, appeared together. Rin was so much more than the Vemnai believed her to be. Rin was not only Nature, but Love, and the power of Life to find a way to procreate and evolve. The Vemnai’s twist on her was her own perverse joke. Rin could be fickle and toy with people for her own amusement. Nevertheless, it seemed that the events in Vemnai between the Matriarch and Aradma had reunited Rin and Soorleyn for yet another lusty tryst. Soorleyn was fickle as well, even more predictably so than Rin. Her interest in Nature’s Goddess would wane. It was just a matter of time. Those two always repeated the same pattern.
“All of the High Gods and Younger Gods are accounted for,” Soorleyn said. She was one of the High Gods and reminded Rin of that every time they separated. “Where are the Elders?”
They all waited patiently. There was nothing else they could do. Once the council was summoned, they wouldn’t leave before the Elders showed.
They aren’t Elders, Athra reminded herself. They are just as much the fabrication of mortal stories as I am. Remember that.
Athra fought away the instinctive awe when Daag, the Good Father, God of Time and Destiny, finally appeared. That was odd. He usually came last. He had always been the highest.
Now he seemed weak. Old.
Daag stooped over, hol
ding fast to his staff. His patriarchal white beard touched the floor. He wore no hat, for a crown of light glimmered over his head. His robes shone as pure and snowy as his hair. He appeared supremely wise and unconditionally kind, as always, but the way he stood, leaning on his staff for support, shocked Athra. She felt a twinge of sadness for her father.
He’s not my father.
Nephyr, Goddess of Death, Fate, and Endings glided in from her crystal ring. She seemed as strong as ever, wearing her starry necklace with a moist, human-looking eye dangling from a pendant and resting between her breasts. Keruhn’s eye.
Nothing ever surprised Nephyr. Her inky black skin and violet eyes took in her surroundings, and then she settled, standing calmly without a word.
The only one missing was Modhrin. He never arrived last. He was the junior of the Elder Gods. He had forged the jewel of the Kairantheum itself, setting Ahmbren in its radiant center, so that Daag might woo Nephyr—
NO! That’s all wrong! The sidhe built the Kairantheum.
Athra’s anger over still being so susceptible to the Kairantheum’s flow bubbled over, and the Celestial Temple shook. All of the gods stared at her in surprise.
“What troubles you, Daughter?” Daag invited. “It is you, I believe, who called us to this place?”
“Yes, Father,” she said. “I… I need your help. All of you.”
She proceeded to explain about what she learned from the information Valkrage had stored within Athra’s Jewel. She told them how the Kairantheum was a magical field of energy fabricated with sidhe wizards long ago in order to capture the power of mortal faith, using them as a protective shield against Those Who Dwell Beyond in the empty spaces between worlds. She described how mortal stories shaped the energy in the Kairantheum so that by the time the gods woke to consciousness, they themselves believed in those stories.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 92