by Jaime Castle
"All this food…" Torsten said, averting his eyes from the devilry. Every attempt to ask Uriah what had happened was ignored, so he decided starting with small talk was the best course. "Where does it come from?"
"Oh, this place and that," Uriah said, licking his fingers after trying a sugared dough ball. "The servants of the goddess deserve only the best."
Torsten cocked his head. "The goddess?"
"You don't need to play coy with me. I’m sure you know exactly where you are. Any man of the King’s Shield would.”
“And, I also know that we took an oath to destroy places like this. To save those who would stray from Iam’s blessed light.”
“You have so much to learn, old friend.” He pulled out a chair for Torsten and sat in one beside it. “Sit. Eat. There is much to discuss.”
Torsten eyed the finely crafted dwarven chair and then cast his gaze upon all the masked heretics patiently awaiting his next move. He’d witnessed their profane magic, and now they wanted him to take his guard down. He sat with one leg on the chair, and his feet planted and ready to shoot him upright. Uriah had served Liam and the Glass Kingdom longer than Torsten had been alive, so he deserved an opportunity to explain himself.
"Uriah, what are you doing here?" he asked, this time making eye contact so he wouldn’t be ignored.
“I could ask you the same. A Wearer of White beyond the Yarrington walls is a rare sight indeed.”
“Same reason you left. The Queen sent me to track her brother into the Webbed Woods and retrieve what he stole from Pi.”
Uriah smirked, torchlight catching the shine of the scars on his cheek. “So, the Flower of Drav Cra finally ran out of grunts and once again sent her best to his doom.”
“I’m sorry, Uriah,” Torsten said. “I never should have allowed you to go. I told her it wasn’t wise after—”
“Allowed?" Uriah spat, his features darkening, wrinkles between his eyes appearing. “I was your Wearer. It was my choice to go in the name of your Queen."
Torsten didn’t miss the fact that Uriah had referred to Oleander as Torsten’s Queen and not his own.
“If anything,” Uriah continued, “I am grateful. Had she never sent me, I’d be blind as the rest of you.”
“Blind? How could one who once served under the vigilant eye of Iam now stand in halls wet with the blood of blasphemy and call anyone blind?”
“I’ll explain everything Torsten, but please, eat. It would be a shame to have all this good food go to waste.”
Torsten pushed the food away.
“I will not defile my body with food sacrificed to idols.”
“Always cautious,” he laughed, mouth full of bread. “The goddess does not require the blood of beasts. None of the food before you has been tainted as you might believe. Please, friend: eat.”
Torsten hesitated still, but his growling stomach finally got the best of him. He tore into the buffet as if he'd not eaten in a fortnight. The meats were tender, the bread moist. How these people managed to cook such a fine feast, Torsten couldn’t understand, but Uriah was a noble since birth and knew how food should taste. He was humble, brave, and selfless—Torsten had never known a better knight.
"I never found Redstar after I left, but I saw evil in the Webbed Woods, that no man should witness. My men were lost. I watched as their eyes were torn from their sockets and their bodies wrapped to be devoured by Bliss and her unholy spawn.”
Uriah took a bite from a chicken leg while Torsten’s stomach lurched at the thought.
“Their eyes…”
“Gouged out,” he said, nonchalant. “She says its eternal damnation.”
“She…Bliss?”
“Aye. From that day forward, I knew such evil couldn’t be allowed to exist; feeding, growing, preparing to wipe us all away. I knew that the moment your Queen stopped sending her food in form of knights, that the woods would no longer contain them.”
“No spider has ever left those woods,” Torsten said, testing a bit of pudding with the tip of his tongue, “in legend or otherwise.”
“So, we all thought, and then I looked into the beast’s eyes and saw true evil. Ancient evil, Torsten; the likes of which Iam and his followers believe no longer exists. It must be destroyed.”
“And why didn’t you return and tell us?”
“Would you have returned had you failed to find Redstar? I knew Oleander wouldn’t listen to me and she was the only one who could. Too obsessed with the curse her brother put on Pi, she is.”
Torsten leaned forward. “So, he was cursed?”
Uriah stopped chewing for a moment. “That’s what I assumed. She believed it was the effigy he stole, but I knew that man as a boy. There was no evil he wouldn’t turn to.”
“Together, we could have made her see together… if you’d come back. You left us alone. The King, Pi… me. For this? Hiding like a mad hermit.”
“None of you would have understood. I couldn’t risk being locked up for speaking what I saw. For I have learned that Redstar himself asked for her help in destroying Bliss. That is what started all this. The color crimson and a thousand eyes, my friend. I saw it, everywhere, in all our futures.”
“What did you just say?” The color crimson and a thousand eyes.
“Ah, so you’ve heard it spoken? I can see the fear in your eyes.”
“Yes. King Pi said something like it before he fell ill.” He didn’t mention the vision he’d seen on the road.
“A warning, sent from our Lady Goddess, Nesilia. Though she is buried, she is not dead. But Bliss grows in power, Torsten. Waiting to feed on the flesh of all mortals. She slept for so long, but when Redstar fled to those woods he woke something terrible.”
Torsten almost choked on his next bite. “You’re working with Redstar?”
“Redstar hasn’t been seen since I left chasing him,” he said, terse. “He doesn’t matter any longer. Bliss is the true enemy, and she must be stopped lest all Pantego fall to her swarm.”
“Redstar cursed Pi, you said it yourself! How could you turn from your own people to chase a mindless beast?”
“Ah, you still don’t believe. Let me show you.” Uriah stood. Torsten didn't know why, but even after everything, he still trusted Uriah.
They rose and he guided Torsten back down into the depths of the fortress.
"Do you all live here?" Torsten asked.
"Not all, but most."
"Do you live here?"
His gaze sunk to the floor. "I have no home anymore.”
The hallway opened up into a large hall. On the far end sat what little was left of a stone-hewn throne once meant for a Dwarven King. A smooth, curved wall was behind it, rising high up through a rift in the ceiling. Sunlight poured down through the slit, its soft glow cast along the top of the space like a crown.
Uriah pointed to the smooth wall. "The Second God Feud is coming, and the seers have predicted a far different outcome.” He lay his hand upon the wall with reverence. "Nesilia was taken from Pantego, sealed below Mount Lister at the hands of her enemy.”
“Iam,” Torsten clarified. “And she is the enemy.”
Uriah shook his head. “Bliss. There is much King Liam taught us which we must unlearn.”
“Blasphemy,” Torsten said but studied the wall intently. It was composed of numerous stone tablets, each one ancient looking and carved intricately, all fitting together like a puzzle.
“It must have taken years for Redstar to find all of these pieces,” Uriah said. “His Drav Cra followers led me here after he abandoned them and disappeared in the Webbed Woods. They were desperate for a new leader, you see. Vengeance clouded Redstar’s mind after his very sister denied helping him. He forgot his purpose.”
Torsten reached out to trace one of the drawn lines. His finger moved along the summit of a mountain. He knew which one it was, although Mount Lister’s tip was presently a flat plain. Flames etched all around it were filled with soldiers and instruments of war. Nesilia
, the Buried Goddess, lay in the center of it all. She was locked in a losing battle with who legends referred to as the One Who Survived.
Torsten had seen similar imagery before, only here the beauty of Nesilia was inscribed in detail, strikingly gorgeous. The churches of Iam usually painted her as a grotesque witch. Here, her wild, luscious black hair cascaded to the ground and even amidst the fierceness of her losing fight there was a softness to her features.
The One Who Remained was equally striking—though her eyes glowed a wicked red. Her armor was spiked along her spine and limbs almost like an insect’s carapace. She gripped the spear piercing Nesilia’s chest on its way to cracking the top of Mount Lister.
A fracture coruscated down from the tip of the spear into the heart of the mountain where the Eye of Iam was etched in black. One of Nesilia’s arms was being pulled down through the fissure.
Torsten stepped back and examined the mural in its entirety. In normal depictions of the God Feud, Iam brought an end to the battle from above, not below. The god’s battled over who held the right to reign over the realm of Pantego, ravaging the land in their selfishness. Nesilia and the one who buried her beneath the great mountain were the last remaining, while Iam, in his wisdom, stayed out of the pointless feud. Instead, he protected the mortals over which the gods watched, and when the fighting stopped, he banished the weakened victor from the world. The One Who Remained, remained no more, and Iam’s light could finally shine upon Pantego unhindered.
"The seers say that Nesilia will return when the blood of the enemy is spilt,” Uriah said. “We do not know exactly how it will happen, and between your Queen and my new friends, we have lost hundreds to the cause."
“You believe that this… spider—”
“Queen Bliss,” Uriah interrupted.
“Fine… you believe she is the One Who Remained?” Torsten asked.
“I know it. And she is not just a Queen—she too is a goddess. Yes, deformed—a remnant of her former self, but a goddess nonetheless. It was a punishment by Iam. He mutated and mutilated her for piercing the heart of the one he loved.”
Torsten wished he wasn’t so concerned or he would have laughed. “You have truly lost it, Uriah. It was Nesilia who began the feud by her selfishness. The one who slew her was banished from this realm by Iam, and both of them deserve what they got. Iam does not punish out of lust or love. He protects us, guides us.”
“My friend, you must listen to me. Nesilia is not who you’ve been made to believe. She is not the enemy.” Uriah laid his hand upon Torsten’s shoulder but it was promptly shaken off.
“I pity you, Uriah. You have turned your back on Iam, your people, and it’s clear there is no changing that. These are carvings etched by seers and heretics, like Redstar, who want nothing more than to see us burn. They lie, they sin, they sacrifice their kin—I will not be party to it.”
“I have seen—”
“Enough!” Torsten bellowed. "I am going to the Webbed Woods on command of our Queen. I will accomplish what you could not and put an end to Redstar’s influence over the royal family for good.”
“You think him still in the woods?” Uriah laughed. “He is dead, Torsten.”
“How do you know this?”
“No man could survive there for a year. He has to be dead. Even his own men gave up on him.”
“I thought you were dead, yet here we are.”
Uriah exhaled. “Will you not listen to reason? Redstar is irrelevant. Pi is irrelevant. There is a greater evil working in that forest. One that needs banishment. Together we might be able to vanquish her. Perhaps we can also learn his fate and reclaim what he stole from Pi while we’re there.”
“Redstar brought ruin upon this realm with his malfeasance—not some spider. I will go into those woods and find that which the Queen desires.”
“You will die there unless you let us help you.”
"Then I will die in service to my kingdom."
Uriah hung his head. He walked over to a nook and returned holding Torsten’s claymore and other effects. “Then I will not stand in your way. Take your things and go, Torsten, but as Bliss hangs you from her web, I hope that you remember it didn’t need to be so.”
Torsten tore his weapon from Uriah’s hand and hung it on his back. “It is only because of who you are that I won’t tell the crown about this place. I’m only glad King Liam isn’t alive to see what you’ve become.”
The news appeared to catch Uriah off guard, but before he could say anything, Torsten grabbed him by the collar. He leaned in so close he could smell the stench on the man’s breath. “Get caught sacrificing another man again, and my mercy will run out.”
Torsten pushed him aside and stomped toward the exit. He was nearly out when Uriah spoke again.
“If King Liam is dead, then the last great Nothhelm is gone,” he said. “Redstar already destroyed Pi’s mind. There is no helping him now. But we can stop Bliss from covering the world in darkness.”
Torsten stopped for a moment, his hands balling into fists. “Just stay out of my way, Uriah,” he growled, then continued on his way.
XXIV
The Thief
“BLOOD MAGIC?” Whitney asked, eyes wide. “You are a blood mage?”
The smile still hadn’t left Sora’s face as Whitney’s shirt smoldered on the ground.
“Are you crazy?” he said.
“What? You can galavant off into the world stealing staves from wizards, but I can’t learn a bit of magic?”
“So, you have heard of me?”
It was dark, but Whitney was pretty sure Sora rolled her eyes. “It was hard not to hear about the blustering thief drinking the Twilight Manor dry the last few weeks.”
“You knew I was there and you didn’t come say, ‘hi?’”
“I stay away from that awful place. You know how many drunks and vagabonds stop by to bloat their legends among us bumpkin townsfolk. I didn’t imagine the thief everyone wished would pack up and leave was you until the attack.”
Whitney scratched his chin. “Weird, I’m never one to leave out my name.”
“Oh, I know, but nobody seemed to care about it. No wonder you want a new one.”
“Very funny, but we’re getting off topic. How in Iam’s name did you learn…” He lowered his voice even though they were alone. “Blood magic.”
“It’s not really an interesting story. Not like one of your grand, exaggerated epics.”
“I’ll have you know that every one of my feats is one-hundred-percent, perfectly true. It’s not my fault I was gifted with the ability to enrapture minds.”
Sora’s eyes rolled so far this time Whitney couldn’t miss it.
“Just tell me,” He pointed to a spot on the ground beneath the boughs of an aged oak tree. “We should stop here for the night. The ground’s pretty wet so it looks like we’re going to have to snuggle up close to keep warm. Where better to talk?”
“You do remember what I just did to your tunic?”
Whitney glanced down at his bare chest. “Right. I’ll get you some wood.”
“You think I’m going to cut myself again just so you don’t catch a chill?”
Whitney started to respond but Sora’s giggle made him realize she was chiding him. He laughed along with her and began gathering wood.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Helping you start a fire.”
“You really don’t understand how this works, do you?”
She stood and searched the ground until she found a spot in between two thick, fallen branches. She squeezed her hand into a fist until a droplet of blood dripped to the earth from her last cut. She murmured something in some foreign language and fire sprung from the wet dirt.
She plopped down and waved her hand through the spikes of flame. It reached out for her palm as if she were controlling it, keeping it from spreading to the boughs of the tree above.
Whitney took a step back, aghast. He’d seen magic before. M
ost humans weren't adept at it, and dwarves never were, but he’d seen more insane miracles than making a fire. He imagined his amazement was more over the fact that it was Sora. He’d always hoped he could learn a trick or two, but not everyone was born attuned to Elsewhere, the shadow realm filled with demons, spirits, and far worse which Iam created for them after the God Feud.
“Okay.” Whitney plopped down by the fire. “You’re seriously going to have to tell me where you learned that.”
“Troborough,” she answered as if that should be expected.
“Not a chance,” Whitney said. “I grew up in that goat-shog town. Really, where did you learn it?”
“Like I said, Troborough.”
“And I thought my stories sounded crazy?”
Sora swiped her hand through the fire so that it licked Whitney’s boots. He yelped and shimmied further away. “Wetzel.”
“What? I thought you just lived in his tool shed? He was an old nutter! He played with medicines, not blood magic!”
“He wasn’t just some old nutter. He was a healer, and if I remember correctly, he sewed up more than a fair share of your cuts.”
“I can pull a thread, Sora. I don’t bleed fire.”
“That’s not how it—” She exhaled. “Wetzel taught me everything he knew. I spent years learning the rest.”
“This isn’t adding up, Sora. How could you have practiced blood magic in the middle of our little town without anyone knowing?”
“Wetzel knew—plus, he’s been doing it for near a century under his shack and no one has found out. It’s not legal you know, using the magic of Elsewhere. What better place to learn than in a town barely anybody has heard of?”
“Were you… even when I was still there?”
She shook her head. “I was too busy getting into trouble with you. But he saw how lonely I was after you left. Then he saw my potential.”
“I always knew there was something off about him.” Her features darkened. “Was…”
Whitney swallowed back the lump forming in his throat. He couldn’t even remember what Wetzel looked like, but it was clear he meant something to Sora. A teacher in what are considered dark arts, is still a teacher, even if Whitney never needed one himself.