Realm Book Three - Illuminated Death

by K. A. M'Lady

  “I had heard whispers long ago of the possibility,” he stated, his voice ripe with wonder, his eyes filled with uncertainty and a strange sort of longing I didn’t quite comprehend. “But I never believed.”

  His hands clung to my waist a moment longer before he released me, closed the edges of my robe around me and stepped back. The crimson glow of his heart slowly dissipated to a dim blush where I knew his pulse beat soundly within the walls of his chest. Jade stepped fully into the room and the moment, and the spell was broken.

  “Gimlit, what’s going on?” I asked, completely unnerved by the entire situation. Surprisingly my voice sounded normal, considering I felt like I could collapse any second. My life was one giant cauldron of swirling, mystic, hou-ha bullshit that just continued to boil over. Sure it would steep and simmer every now and then and I would think I would gain some ground. Come to some understandings. Learn a little bit more. Then, like the simmering pot of shit that it was, the fire would get too high and the magical mayhem would spill over once again.

  Just once I wished it would just simmer long enough for me to catch my damn breath.

  “I’m sorry.” The apology came from Jade, who’d finally come completely into the room, only to stop at the edge of my dresser. We’d returned from our run in the forest, and he and Prism had helped the others get Jet off to Werepanther dreamland. She would be out for hours. Prism said she would stay and be her watcher, her protector until morning arrived.

  Jade, being Alpha, had returned to his glorious human form and headed for the shower. Gimlit had met me in the hall, robe in hand, a million unspoken words between us. And now, apparently there would more questions that needed to be answered.

  Across the distance of my bedroom, my eyes met the iridescent paleness of Jade’s crystal-clear blue eyes. They were the most striking eyes I’d ever seen on a person; so clear even the palest of topaz or a smoky crystal could never compare. But now his eyes were filled with regret, and I couldn’t begin to wonder why he was sorry.

  Was he sorry that he’d stopped us? Or sorry that he hadn’t gotten there sooner? I guess it would depend on what Gimlit had to say.

  “No, my fair Wolf,” Gimlit stated, turning towards Jade, his head bowed in acknowledgement and respect, “it is I that must ask your forgiveness. And your forgiveness as well, Rihker.” He turned slightly towards me, yet he did not raise his head. He did not look at me when he spoke. It unnerved the hell out of me.

  “Look at me, Gimlit.” I told him, a thousand uncertainties running rampant through my brain. “Look at me and tell me what the hell is going on.” There was a hard edge of panic to my voice. Urgency and fear as well. Each emotion lodged itself in my throat like a hex, or a dark scepter yet to be seen. His behavior was so all over the board I didn’t know what was up or down. Gimlit was my rock, my ever-soothing Zen. He was my steady breeze in a roaring wind. The tiny flame in a blazing inferno. Gimlit was my calm, my peace and strength, and suddenly it seemed like he was slipping from me.

  His sigh was audible, emotion packed and somehow weirdly comforting. To hear his sigh told some distant part of my brain that he was gathering his thoughts. That his wits were returning. My peaceful, vengeful, destructive and nurturing warrior was gathering himself and somehow, all would be right with the world. Wouldn’t it?

  “Calm yourself, mistress.” He reached out, taking my trembling hand in the solid grasp of his large, cool fingers. “It is not as bad as you fear.”

  “Then what is it? Why was your heart glowing like a beacon? Why did I feel the urgent demand to have you buried within my flesh as though we were one cohesive unit? Why was my need so great and the will and needs of the world around me nothing more than a quivering drop on a rain-filled lake? Why, Gimlit? Can you tell me that? What the hell is going on?” Each question brought my pulse rate back up, my voice rising in crescendo with out of control fears.

  “Long before my birth,” he started, “when the world was new and the Light and the Darkness hovered on the edges of the universe together, it was said that the Prophets created the Heart Spell. Within it resided the Light and Love of the Way. It is said that all of the Guardians of the chosen few would hold in their possession and protection all of the Tells of their ward until such a time as they are ready to walk into the universe knowing. But there were whispers, even then, in the beginning, that the Darkness was jealous of the Light. That it coveted what the Light had created. Yearned for the glory it had granted. That it despised all who walked in its splendor and would do anything to take over those with the slightest hint of weakness in their life.

  “The Light, knowing the vileness of the Darkness, took many ardent strides to protect its children from the suffering that was the Darkness. First, by giving special Tells to those who would fight the Darkness and keep its corruption from spreading into the Land of Light. To keep it from defiling the Children of the Light,” he affirmed his voice resonating through the room with the mystery of the ages. It filled the small space with the secrets of a history passed down through time.

  “These things are marked in The Book of the Way. They are the rules we follow, customs we learn, and magic we strive to uphold. But there is one secret that is written in its passages.” He looked into my eyes. His voice had grown thick with mystery, raw with emotion and hope. I was almost afraid to breathe.

  “There is one secret, Rihker, written within the books pages—scrawled in a text as old as time itself. It has never been translated. It is in a language so old that is completely unknown to our people,” he told me.

  “The Mystics say it will unlock the Tells of all of the Children of Light. Others say that it is the doorway to what is and what might be. Still, there are some that believe it unlocks the mysteries of life itself. But, whatever it is and whoever holds its pages, holds the key. For the Light will burn in the Darkness when the Heart Spell is set free.”

  His words faded and I was left numb. Bereft of knowledge. Yet awakened by a brief understanding at the same time. But still filled with a plethora of angst. What pages had I consumed in my fight with Modgav? Were they the pages that would set our people free? Would they release Tells? Provide us with the power to defeat the Darkness once and for all?

  What other pages had I consumed? By consuming them, did I only condemn us instead? Prophets! I had so many questions that I had no answers for.

  But I knew someone who might. And she’d damn well better be in the mood to be cooperative or so help her, I swear I’m going to suck the remaining Light right out of her! If that’s even a possibility.

  Some days, one should be really careful what they wish for.

  Chapter Eight

  a colored lithograph of a field.

  There are no other pictures on Ward D.

  From Barley Field – Olav H. Hauge

  Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly

  “Tell me again why we’re voluntarily going to the PIT?” The concern that filled Jade’s voice was telling. No one went to the PIT for anything, short of certain death. The PIT—it’s what the Others called the Silent Court’s dungeons; the lower rungs of never ending doom and oppression. The PITs were the holding cells for all of the Other World’s dysfunctional, criminal and terminally insane. PIT or Pain in Transition; the transition towards death. It’s the last stop on the way to the Shadow Lands for the wicked—no matter their preference of power. Light or Darkness, it’s the place you ended up right before the Court took away your life, your afterlife and possession of your soul.

  I always wondered what they did with all those souls. Were they in a black box somewhere? Rattling around? Scraping the dark edges for escape?

  I seemed to be one of the few who voluntarily visited the PIT. On more occasions than I cared to think about, actually. In fact, a big chunk of Ward B, Block C and most of the nasty inhabitants of Ward D were put there by me, personally. Ah, the price of being a Hunter. I knew that if most of them could get their grubby little hands on me, I’d be slop
burger for sure.

  To my delight, we were headed down into the deepest, darkest hole of the labyrinth. Each step leading straight on through to the end of the line. Past Ward D there isn’t even a sign telling you the name of the area you’re entering, only the grim conclusion that beyond this point an illuminated death awaits in all its diabolical, illustrious glory.

  Most of the Court’s jailers liked to call the place HELL, as in Here, Everafter Lacks Light. The tenants just view it as another shade of Darkness. I guess when you walk the edge too often, the colors tend to smear. Light and Darkness bleeding in an all-consuming smudgy haze. Something for the wise to remember.

  Each step brought us further into the recesses of the Court’s nether-realm. A place too few had traveled and less had returned from. I’d been here twice. Neither time brought back memories of comfort or mirth.

  At first I thought that Drae, my own personal Judge Dread, would have given me all kinds of shimmering shit on toast for needing to speak to her. But surprisingly, his supreme Judge Trollness seemed to be in a magnanimous mood. The thought of Xavier Drae, Troll Overlord, in any mood other than bleak made me nervous. It made me wonder what sort of parallel universe I’d woken up in and what this trip to the PIT was going to cost me. Here’s hoping it wasn’t flesh, blood or my soul.

  I just wasn’t in a giving mood today.

  I felt like a Dwarf petering my way down into the mountain in search of gems as my merry band of fellows followed behind me. Gimlit was hard on my heels, the girth of his chest shield-like and hovering every step we took. Jade followed close behind him, small currents of power coiling around him like a small, nervous force field. Each jolt vibrated through to me with his every exhaled breath. His wolf’s hackles were up, tension running high the further down into the darkness we went.

  I couldn’t blame him, if not for the fact that I’d walked these dark and hallowed halls before and knew the way out, my she-wolf would be clamoring for escape as well. Oh, I knew she wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of death’s proximities, for I felt her pacing; a tight coil brushing repeatedly against my insides. Caged and anxious; the heavy scent of despair and desperation thick in the air with each inhaled breath and every step we took.

  Against my better judgment, Xavier’s ginormous, pocked and pitted face filled the small enclosure at the end of the line. His flame-red head was stark against the austere accoutrements of his black over-coat, where it blended with the shadows. His radiant, glowing eyes an odd apparition in the macabre dance of light thrown from the spire of sconces that had been embedded into the very walls that limned the cavernous stairwell.

  The halls and corridors we traversed seemed to take us to some sort of different level of time; a moment where the granules of sand sift slowly, the parallels shift and each fleeting second becomes destiny in the mist. At first you don’t quite notice you’ve wandered deeper into this strange vortex until the light shimmers and shifts. It becomes a glimmer of shadows dancing on the dew-slick walls that catches in the corner of your eye, fleeting and iridescent. A sort of dèjá vu of your heartstrings that suddenly pulls you past memories and moments, hopes and hopelessness.

  Then, a sudden intake of breath and you taste time’s hesitancy. Its horribly bitter sweetness against the thickness of your tongue. It becomes a sort of residue that clings like broken promises and miserable regrets where it lingers on your dry, parted lips. And just like that, you’ve reached the end and you hadn’t even seen it coming.

  I stopped, my heart racing as a plethora of fearful thoughts invaded me. Ice and sadness seemed to coalesce from further down the corridor and I didn’t want to take that final step. Weariness and heartache enveloped me while I clung to the landing—a flashing sign in my subconscious glaring, ‘Doom and Destruction Straight Ahead!

  Then there was the strange metallic glow from the cell beyond that kept me frozen in my tracks. A solid knot of fear, angst and excitement rippled through my gut like a lance.

  My sudden stop caused Gimlit and the others to slam into me.

  “The shield keeps her in place. Her magic cannot harm you.” Xavier Drae’s voice floated to me like a distant storm cloud. In my mind his words rang true, but I couldn’t seem to tell my hammering heart that it was so. I mean, the last I’d seen her I was seven. And even then she had been amazing. Full of life and drunk with power.

  So much power. Wasted, on the taint of Darkness. It had latched on to her so tightly you could no longer see the color of her eyes. They’d become nothing more than black cavernous pools of impending destruction.

  And me, a mere child, had been chosen as her deceiver. Oh, yes. The Court had used me well. Recruited me and fed lies more glorious than any child could ever have hoped to see come to fruition.

  Acceptance is all. And love is a beautiful lie when the truth is twisted. Hope becomes nothing more than fantasy filled with rotting wishes and childhood dreams that turn to dust in the hands of liars, swindlers and fools. It’s just too bad I had been too young to know for certain who the deceivers really were. At least time grants us growth and the winds of healing. For one learns much with the passage of time.

  I stood on the last step of those stairs and wondered if it was enough. For me and for her.

  “Only one way to know,” Gimlit whispered. His hand was firm on my shoulder, strength of friendship and love pouring from him with the briefest of touches. I let out a sigh of resolution. I knew the next few moments would be difficult. I truly had no other choices. Time, that precious stealer of all, had wrought my path for she had the answers I sought.

  “So be The Way,” I stated with a calm I did not feel and took that next step.

  Beyond, at the end of the last corridor, was a black door and nothing else. The walls of the lengthy corridor were tinted a smudgy, brackish color, mixed somewhere between a void of black, the color of sludge rotted slime and blood that has dripped so long in the cold darkness it no longer knows what color it should hold.

  “Whatever you do, do not touch the walls,” Xavier stated as we all hesitantly skirted the ancient tomb-like corridor.

  “What the hell is that smell?” Jade questioned, his face inches from the wall, nostrils flaring. His icy, iridescent eyes glared at their slime in disgust.

  The smell was just as repulsive as the glistening dark stain that seemed to come from within. You could smell the cold of earth, the rank of decaying bones, and the festering of wounds. The stench was definitely permeating from walls.

  If guilt had a scent, it was soiled like the rot of sewage six weeks in a hard sun and lingering like a green haze. If pain had a perfume, it was decrepit death, mass world destruction and the loss of hope and humanity, all sealed in the bowels of sufferings’ last breath, wafting on the currents of time’s stagnant breeze.

  “It is the essence of the damned,” Xavier replied gruffly, the hint of shame lingering in his voice as if each glimmering drip were a mark on his soul. The oblique haze seemed a reminder of all he’d condemned to the lower rungs.

  It was not like he himself had created this deathly realm. I am certain, however, that he’d cast his share of creatures to the depths of its bowels, so I’m not sure how sorry I felt for him. He too, was a part of the machine that was the Silent Court. He held their secrets close to his chest, did their bidding. I knew that I answered to him, but it made me wonder to whom he answered to. Lately, it seemed I was always coming up with more questions and never enough answers.

  The stench and Xavier’s words gave this trip a whole new meaning. I had never known, in all of my visits, that the condemned pretty much just rotted into the very core of the PIT. But where else did I expect them to go? Unless you were immediately condemned to death, to the Shadow Lands or to endless servitude to the Court, you pretty much got to rot in the PIT. And rot you obviously did.

  Welcome to the Silent Court’s version of Purgatory.

  Uncertainty began to consume me. Maybe it was because of our surroundings or the magnitu
de of the next few minutes, but by the time we’d made it to the door I finally noticed the strange, hollow keening that seemed to flow from beyond it. Every nerve ending, every hair on the back of my neck and all of my senses of danger flared at once. When my body slammed against the far side of the wall, all realization was brought home that this had been a really, really bad idea. By then however, it was far too late to change my mind.

  The slick, gooey muck Drae had just warned us not to touch felt cold and unforgiving as my back cracked against it. A burning shock singed through my spine and immediately the howls of the dead and the dying ripped through me. With a startled gasp of lost breath, I began to channel the dead.

  My head knocked repeatedly against the wall. Bursts of color, brilliant and amazing exploded before my eyes. Sparking flashes of green, yellow and orange hues like a kaleidoscope began to swirl, swimming in and out of my vision. Then it filled like an ink pot, pouring in from the top down until nothing remained but the Darkness. The screams of suffering; vile, angry screams of death in all its varied, unforgiving forms encompassed me.

  I felt a spirit brush through my flesh, corporeal tendrils wafting as though tethered to my bones, my soul and remembered the cries of the suffering from earlier this summer. Their pain and agony was a familiar memory. It was a journey of death I’d not likely ever forget.

  Their Darkness called to me. Reached for me like a distant whisper, or a remembered prayer. Only this time, I accepted it. I welcomed it. Opened myself to its vast, dark scorn and embraced the misery, the hate and all of the agony that the suffering had to offer. I held my arms wide like a mother seeking to comfort its young and let the wraiths know the ease of my embrace.

  The suffering settled.

  It was then that the wind came; icy, frigid in its wintry blast. It shot the door from its hinges, sent it barreling straight towards me. It blew the hair from my face. So sudden was the rush, so cold the torrent I felt like my flesh would freeze, crack and fall from my bones. Gimlit was there in seconds, but the cold felt like forever before his massive frame was able to block the door, shove it away as if it were made from cork. Then the wind reversed, my ears popped and the gale sucked back into the cell, the cold and ice wrenching itself from the depths of my soul.