by K. A. M'Lady
“You came seeking answers, did you not?”
Closed-lipped, I could barely nod a response. The hum was getting not louder, but stronger. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. Its vibration resonated in my flesh, beneath my fingernails. A strange sort of keening I could feel almost to the roots of my teeth as the staccato drilled its way into the core of my being, wrapping itself around my aura, causing my soul to quake.
“This, my dear granddaughter, is the Sphere of Empathy. It is a seeker of true self. You wish to know what you are, or what it is you hold inside of you...yes.”
I watched with a sort of grudging dismay while she reached her slim, pale hand into the black bag and pulled out a small crystalline orb that shone stark white like a brilliant round star in the palm of her hand. The sweet, sickly melody of its hum sang its heaven-song in an antechamber of Hell, and I couldn’t help but shiver with impending fear.
She held it out to me. “Take it, Rihker,” she whispered. “The knowledge is here. All you have to do is take it.” I watched the dark glow of her fathomless eyes fill with an eerie light—shades of endless gray—and I wondered, for the hundredth time, whose side of the line I was really helping. The Darkness? The Light?
Slowly, cautiously my fingers extended with a will of their own. Images of Kieran, Dragon, Ian, Garric, even Mercy flashed before me in a sort of kaleidoscope. Poetry of life and death. A flashing feature film of incandescent images. Some filled with laughter, some with lust. Others with gratitude and friendship.
The hum grew louder the closer my palm got to the orb. The wicked gleam on Lady Arwin’s face danced in the darkness of her deceitful eyes. I knew, knew as sure as I stood there, that the orb was more than she told. Certain I would see more than she said it would show me.
Bitter truths and treacherous lies. My family seemed full of them.
How I knew that she was lying I had no idea, but I was as certain as the night is long, my wolf is red, and I wanted my father dead for this curse of my birthright.
From one heartbeat to the next, without thought, understanding or consideration of the repercussions I did what my subconscious told me to do. I grabbed her free hand with my left, snagged her right wrist in a jerking motion, and forced her to bring her hands together around the humming sphere while I held them to the Sphere, to clutch it as she would have me. Forced the truth from a tongue twisted and choking on deceit, vengeance and immoral inequities.
The instant her flesh met the crystal I knew exactly what the crystal was, what she was going to use it for and how I would use it to aid me now.
“You’re truly pathetic!” I told her while violent images ricocheted through my mind like Orcs playing volleyball with a severed head. Only it was my head they were using for the damn ball. Oh, her Sphere would show me the way to my true self, all right. And it did so, right after it was done jamming its way through her wicked, violent and wretched history. A life filled with murderous lies, betrayals, witchery, debauchery, failed attempts at vengeance and a history of Darkness so repulsive I was left utterly amazed that this, this….creature had ever been a child who had walked in the Light.
“Judge you not, little Changeling,” she sneered. “Little half-breed bastard of a Darkling,” she whispered vehemently while instant rewind suddenly buckled my knees. Before I knew what was happening, it was she who was holding my hands to the Sphere. It was my history zooming past in streaks of Light and Darkness.
I stood in the cavern with Modgav, scarfing down pages from the Book. Inhaling them like a starving waif so that the Goblins would never have their power. Feeling the greed and the righteousness coil in my belly at the knowledge that these were magics that the Goblins would never have, even as I trembled before the Light.
Despite the dripping, haze-like quality of the memory I still felt now what I felt then—that the Light hastened, grew like a beacon and shown like the mystical fire of purity that I knew that it was, even in this sludgy Darkness.
In my mind the pages blew up like dancing fireflies. Despite the pressure of my clenched lids, I saw every word they possessed. Knew every phrase like they were embedded on secreted scrolls hidden in a corridor of my brain. I now understood their every meaning and the validity of their repercussions. When the glow became too bright, brighter than the sun, cleaner and purer than what the moment of birth for the entire world must have been like, that man and immortal alike had no choice but to kneel before its splendor, I bowed my head before its glory. Surrendered to its knowledge and its meaning. And as I stood in an antechamber of Hell with a cast-off child of Light—defiled and defamed for her transgressions—I forgave her, thereby accepting the wisdom and the power that was the Light.
When I opened my eyes, the chamber was still filled with a brilliant, golden blaze. Lady Arwin lay cowering on the floor before me, her hands no longer holding mine to the Sphere. No, she was too busy trying to block out the power of the Light.
“What have you done? What have you done?” she repeatedly questioned. Her voice held awe and fear that it had not shown the entire time I had been in her presence. I would have found it funny, except I too was awed by all I had witnessed. Since the moment she’d forced my fingers on the Sphere, Lady Arwin’s whole demeanor had changed and it was she who now quaked in my presence. It was she who cowered in the shadows. It was she who hid from the Light.
Her Sphere wasn’t a Sphere of Empathy like she said. It was a Sphere of Knowing. And I now knew.
I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the old woman, for she was old, despite her reasonably kept looks. From our trip down memory lane, I’d guesstimate her age close to fifteen hundred years, give or take. But apparently, long years still hadn’t taught her anything. Or at least the important things.
“You ask what I have done,” I said by way of beginning. “It would seem it is the one thing you, in all your life, have not.”
She looked up at me then, her dark eyes filled with the same strange dark emptiness that I saw upon our first meeting. Only now, they appeared more hollow. Less certain. A question marked her brow.
“I have accepted. Not just who or what I am. Or even what it is I might become,” I said with a shrug, as if it was of little matter. “I have also accepted those around me. Those who are different than me. Even those whose Light may be a little dimmer or brighter than my own. And yes, those who walk that line of gray, just like I do. Maybe if you’d have done a little bit more of that in your life…” I didn’t bother to continue the statement. What was the point? She’d made her decisions. Good, bad or indifferent. No matter the cause, they were her choices, she was the one who had to live with them. It’s just too bad she had an eternity in Hell to come to terms with those decisions.
I took the Sphere of Knowing, put it back in its little black bag and tied it to my belt. I didn’t think she’d have need of it any longer. With my questions, for now, answered I had other monster mashing to attend to. Besides, whoever said the road to Hell was well traveled might just have had me in mind when they said it, and obviously hadn’t planned for an extended stay.
Chapter Eleven
Where are you wandering to, little fools
Itchy little wasps sucking rotting flowers
From Wasps by Ho Xuan Huong
Translated from the classical Chinese and Nôem by Marilyn Chin
Stepping through the Vortex felt like walking through one of those giant bubbles of liquid soap; filmy and sticky, yet remarkably fresh. I finally felt like I could draw a complete, clean lungful of breath for the first time in what I knew was moments, but had felt like ages. Not to mention that I was now fully aware of every iota of knowledge I had gleaned, not only from my Na-Nan, as she called herself, but from the Sphere of Knowledge I now possessed, as well as the pages from the Book of The Way that I had ingested.
“You’ll not succeed,” Lady Arwin screeched from behind the Vortex walls. “They’ll use you up and spit you out like an overused gamboling Zombie. You’ll be just one m
ore piece of cannon fodder in an endless list of forgotten names. Do you hear me, child?” she bellowed.
My gaze found Xavier’s, and for one small measure of a moment I considered Lady Arwin’s words while I watched the knowledge fade from his face. While I watched the years of subterfuge and strategies flow behind his eyes. A lifetime of Other Worlds games — Rise and Conquer, Defeat and Peril. It was all there, each pain, every uncertainty and every death ran the gamut of emotions behind the splendor of Judge Trollness’ eyes. For the first time since I’d known Xavier Drae, I wondered whose side he was truly on. Theirs, ours, or his own?
The sizzling burst of an explosion directly behind me broke my revere. The cell we stood in shook to the core of its foundation. Dust rained and soot smoldered. I turned just as another dark, fiery blast rocked the walls surrounding the Vortex.
“You’ll never leave here alive, Rihker! We’ll all perish in this hell-hole before I allow you to leave with the knowledge to save the Light,” Lady Arwin swore. “Not when I have worked so long to turn it over to the Darkness.”
She was screeching again, her voice like claws along the flesh. I turned back to see her dark form floating, like an elusive shadow filled with hate, above the chamber of her cell, despite her burned up wings. Venom in the form of wrath spewed from her lips. Power erupted from the snake like tendrils of mist that clung all around her. She appeared more a black halo of death than a debunked child of Light. Each blast of power she threw at us grew more vigorous than the last. The Vortex quaked with the aftershocks. The chamber began to shake and crumble as each explosion rocked the dark world around us.
“We need to leave this place.” It was Xavier, his hand strong and stern on my shoulder. His words of urgency pulled me back from the displacement my mind had traversed. With one last glance, I watched Lady Arwin, watched her descent, her free-fall into the deep end of the abyss.
“What if she succeeds and gets out of that box?” Gimlit questioned. He had his sword drawn before him, each arm rigid with tension, muscles tight with strife. My thinker was in battle mode, ready for the end, or the beginning, I wasn’t sure which. A good fight was never feared by an Ogre, least of all my Guardian. But, it was a good question to ask. What if she did escape the Vortex? What then? Could we allow her Darkness to be set free? Could we allow her hatred to spread amongst the human world? If the Other World could not contain her, how were the poor, meek humans to survive her brand of Darkness?
Xavier was two steps from the door to the chamber, Jade, with his pale eyes watchful was seriously considering a retreat as well, despite the battle stance that he bore. In the pit of my stomach I too wanted to bail, but what then? That was the million dollar question. Too bad the next blast of dark power against the side of the Vortex wall left us no time for answers.
The chamber rocked and shuddered like it had been struck by an earthquake. We all staggered while the roof rained pebbled dust all around us. I had to close my eyes and hold my breath to avoid the haze. It was that, or suck it in and having it coat my vision. Call me crazy, but breathing and seeing sounded like much better options. When I was finally able to open my eyes again, I watched, horrified, as the Vortex rumbled. The outer shield rippled like a skipping rock across the perfect glass sheet of a still lake, its surface quaking. In its wake, a gaping, circular hole.
Lady Arwin’s laughter ripped through the chamber and Xavier was suddenly beside me, a sword and shield I hadn’t known he carried clenched tightly in each hand. The sudden appearance of Drae’s weaponry made me wonder where he’d kept them hidden. What other weapons he had secreted about his person. I had known that Trolls were warring creatures, but this just proved how battle ready they really were. It was something to remember for future reference. Especially where Drae was concerned.
I briefly considered what Xavier Drae was really like beyond the persona of his three-piece suit and matching tie. Beyond the image of Silent Court lackey. It made me think of what he may have been like before war and reason brought the Other World into the lives of men.
“May the Prophets have mercy upon us all, should she escape this chamber,” he stated. The gruff seriousness of his voice trampled down my spine and jammed itself like a fist in the pit of my gut.
Who knows, maybe I’d get to see what Drae was made of after all. Scary thought, that. Just goes to show how shitty this escapade was becoming. This close to Halloween, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Even I knew the fabric between the Light and the Darkness grows most thin this close to All Hallows Eve. Death, madness and Darkness just all seemed to go hand in hand.
Jade had stripped down to his jeans and was already morphed into Werewolf mode. His elongated jaw showed the line of sharp canines, his glorious chest a froth of silver-grey hair. His hands and fingers had grown into the extended, razor-sharp claws that I knew could and would tear up an opponent and leave them bleeding and worthless as they begged for their life.
With all of their battle readiness, all of their brute strength and warrior code, I knew that this fight, despite my grandmother’s grandiose arraignment of illusion and magical subterfuge, would be a quiet fight of skill, intellect and downright blatant will to succeed and survive. In a nutshell, it was just her and me.
Here’s hoping that the Sphere had shown me the Way. And, that I wasn’t about to burn my ass in an antechamber of Hell.
Chapter Twelve
I felt the fear of it.
I trembled as if I knew the true terror of it.
Then I froze: I was ice, all ice. My blood drained into it.
From Phoebus was gone, all gone, his journey over –
Anonymous
Translated from the Latin by Eavan Boland
So much for escaping unscathed, I thought, looking up from the floor of my grandmother’s chamber room, boulders, dust and a dark, sooty haze falling all around me. I had an ache the size of the rock that lay next to me pulsating in my temples, and I had no idea where Gimlit, Jade or Drae were, or what the hell had just happened.
Every bone in my body had felt like I’d been put through a meat grinder, but my flesh was still intact. Or was it? Cautiously I sat up, feeling each and every ache that coursed through my body while I scanned the room for the others. What I saw disturbed me more than words.
Lady Arwin was floating above the still and obviously wounded body of Xavier Drae. There was a pool of crimson oozing out from around his head and a sword, his sword, stuck through his shoulder. But that’s not what bothered me. No, it was the sight of Drae’s corporeal soul wafting forward like a puppet on strings between his still living form and that of my grandmother.
Drae was screaming; ranting over and over about the pain while Lady Arwin seemed to toy with his soul. She made it dance in and out of his flesh with a mere wiggle of her fingers.
The dark delight that shone in her eyes, the crease of her smiling lips filled me with utter disgust. This was not power. This was a vile atrocity. Pure, undeniable evil that knew no bounds. Evil that would be stopped.
True, I didn’t have the greatest respect for Drae; he was a puppet. But that did not give her the right to play with his soul the way she did. It did not give her the right to steal from him what did not belong to her. She had been tried for her crimes and found guilty. Drae deserved the same fate, if the fates so decreed it. She was not Judge and Executioner.
“You dare judge me?” Her voice was the sound of thunder bounding its way inside my flesh to toil against my bones. Her empty eyes found mine in the darkness and never before had I felt such a vast emptiness, a cold so immeasurable, nor a Darkness so complete staring back at me.
Lady Arwin had become the Darkness. And the Darkness was well pleased.
I blinked at her, unsure how to answer. I still had no idea where Gimlit and Jade were, and now Drae’s very soul hung in the balance.
I quickly tried to put the pieces of the last few minutes back together: She had only been partially through the Vortex, sending weird glowing o
palescent black spheres of power ricocheting around the chamber. We had been dodging them like eighth grade geeks in some prepubescent dodgeball game of ‘blast the Other World nerds’.
Every time a ball would hit its mark, power cascaded over us; Darkness slathered our bodies as if we’d been dipped in electrified oil. Our limbs would pulsate with shock, extremities contorting, muscles constricting and convulsing before paralysis set in. You couldn’t help but watch, slack-jawed, while lungs seized—a last gasp for what seemed to be the dying—certain that eyes were about to pop out of heads in a gushing white flow. Then, the moment would pass and finally, we’d move again.
None of it had seemed real. It was like I had just dream-walked through the entire thing in this darkening corporeal hell. I sat on the floor, watching wordlessly while my grandmother sucked the soul out of Xavier Drae and felt like nothing more than a bag of bones subsiding of withered hopes.
“You’ll never stop me,” she laughed as another black ball of power slammed into my chest.
It was the same feeling of imminent death by drowning in the paralyzing sludge felt by all of us. I’d watched the terror ride the faces of those I cared for. Knew that they, unlike me, could not ride the full wave of Darkness.
I recalled seeing my Ogre, Gimlit, rife with agony and it tore at my heart. Seeing him, the most powerful and elite of his kind, grow stone-faced and fearful while the Darkness rode him like a thief—immortality and character its possession of choice—it sparked my ire as most other things could not.
Then there was Jade. His pale, pale eyes so round with fright, so horror-stricken that I wasn’t quite certain where the illustrious sheen ended and the theft of his spirit began. When his body convulsed, I felt it. When his wolf had howled internally, mine perked up her ears.
I knew how to stop this, but the Darkness rode my uncertainty. It filled me with fear and insecurity. Sure, I had taken the Sphere of Knowing, but that didn’t give me some internal mojo of exuberant ability to forget my shortcomings. I am, after all, still part human. And the Darkness, I knew, was using my uncertainty as my weakness.