by K. A. M'Lady
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dark, dark my light, and dark my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
I climb out of my fear.
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
From In a Dark Time – Theodore Roethke
The world seemed filled with strangled cries and howling voices. All around shadows swept in and out of my vision. Horrified screams, cackles and deranged laughter echoed in a chilled wind, tearing across my skin. Each scathing howl ate away at my soul. I knew I could not let the Darkness beat me down. Nor could I let it consume me. To do so would make me mad. Madder, more deranged than my father.
I tried to focus on why I had come here. Why I had walked away from the others that I loved to save another. I felt disconnected from them yet strangely there, in that great hall bearing witness to the melee of massacre. If I looked as though from my peripheral vision, I could see the destruction all around me. Vampires and Werewolves tearing each other apart. Blood and other dark matter splattered walls and floors.
Prism had someone in her dragon mouth, teeth gnashing. Gleefully she chomped on bones. A fearful death-rattle echoed in my chest while feet fell to the floor in a slopping gush of gore.
One of the Death Stalkers was in the process of freeing Jade, his body already forming into his Were. I looked at him, felt the spark of my she-wolf alight with his own. Smelled, suddenly, the overwhelming scent of fur and wind, earth and fields. The words Hurry spun through my mind. Pierced my heart and I felt his love.
I watched him quickly move to set free his brothers. They were pouring the vials Prism had prepared down their throats while the Death Stalkers fended off the onslaught of attacks. Jirvel stood at the altar screaming. Ordering. Screeching her angst and her disbelief. The sacrificial knife was in her hand. I knew I needed to move. The rest had to take care of itself, if just for this moment longer.
I closed my eyes briefly, and prayed to the Prophets to guide me. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Where to look for Kieran’s soul. I focused my thoughts on him. His long, dark locks, and the way they felt when they poured through my fingers. The feel of his flesh to my touch. Muscles bunching and flexing as he lay poised above me, his body warm with the fire of my blood, the heat of our lovemaking, the lingering touch of his kiss.
I could smell him...earth and sandalwood, musk and pure man. I envisioned the way his violet eyes sparkled when they were lit by lust and desire. The way they darkened with anger. My stomach burned with need for him. My heart ached with emptiness and love. I opened my eyes and let that love guide me. Refusing to acknowledge the fear.
I had no idea where my feet trod. Which direction I was heading or where the paths I was taking were leading me. I didn’t care. I had to find him. The essence of him. His soul.
I needed him to live. Needed him like the trees need air and the earth needs water. Needed him like nothing I’d ever known before. It consumed me. Overwhelmed me. It became a blinding white light in the Darkness around me.
It sped my momentum until I was running through the shadows. Like the blind, I skirted objects in the mist that I could not see. Creatures that had form, but no function. I ran and dodged things that were hazy blurs with screaming faces. Vile, horror-filled beings lashed out at me with claws and I’d duck without thinking. Grotesque things would punch, reach and grope at me in the darkness and I’d dodge and swerve every attack. Kieran’s face and scent and voice were the only things that kept me moving.
My chest burned for oxygen. My legs ached with a fire-filled pain, but still I ran in a darkened world full of alien beings. Monstrous creatures reached up from the vaporous mist, latched on to my legs and I’d kick them off. They’d appear out of nowhere before me like corporeal ghosts, strike out at me in anger and madness and I’d be forced to fight, Calling my own blades to my hands for my protection.
I ran for what seemed like hours, days even. Ran until my heart filled with the hard ache of lost hope and I felt I could run no more. Thoughts that I’d failed Kieran engulfed me. Terror-filled rage burned through my mind and I couldn’t escape the feeling that this time I might have failed them all. Their faces floated through my memories like phantoms: Markus, Berg and Jade, Ien and Garric, hell, all of those who’d come to my aid. The thought that they could be decimated while I wandered endlessly in this eternal misty land of Shadows and lost dreams burned in my gut.
Desperate, I fell to my knees and screamed. Angry tears streamed down my cheeks. My heart felt hollow. Empty. I sobbed until it felt like my heart would burst in my chest. I cried for every heartache I had every known: my own despicable childhood, my uncertain future. I cried for the friends I’d already lost and the loves I might yet lose tonight. I cried in anger and rage. Sobbed out my sadness and my remorse. Each tear an emptying of my losses while my soul continued to fill with something else. Something darker. Something more despicable than hate.
My tears fell until I was gasping for air that wouldn’t come. I hiccupped and heaved and finally I could cry no more. When there was nothing left inside me, nothing except the sheer emptiness of absolute resolve and bittersweet loathing, for the depth of my feelings and my situation, I heard the tiny cling of swordplay.
My heartbeat jumped four spaces. Adrenalin spiked through my body like fierce currents of Light and I stood in a rush. Black spots flashed across my vision. The hazy world around me swayed, throwing my equilibrium off. I staggered, caught myself and swayed again, stomach clenching before the world seemed to right itself. Then, I bolted in the direction I thought I’d heard the clatter of weaponry coming from. I don’t think I even breathed during those first several paces that I ran. But I remember the way the spark of possibility felt rushing through my body; hope beyond hope running rampant in my heart for the first time in what seemed like days. It was brilliant and blinding and life altering. And I knew then that the Light could shine in the Darkness.
Briefly I realized that if someone was fighting, that someone had to be Gimlit. By the Prophets – Please let it be Gimlit! I prayed.
Up ahead, beyond the thickening mist, I could just make out four shapes. Three were grossly malformed, macabre and disfigured. They looked like Orcs that had been turned inside out. Massive in width and breadth with large meaty frames, each figure bleeding as if from several deaths.
Where their skin should have been dripped and oozed. Wounds old and new festered with rot. Skin sloughed off bone like rotted meat. Their eyes made sucking sounds when they blinked and even from the distance that still separated us, I could hear its sloshing sound. It was nauseating. Had I not needed the creature they were bent on killing, I’d had run in the other direction.
I’m not sure what it was about Shadow Slaves that have been Called back to the realm of waking, but this was the second time I’d seen creatures that appeared this way. Was their rot because a creature of Death had Called them and couldn’t make them whole? Or, was it because you just couldn’t return the true dead into service? Something else for me to ponder at another time.
Right now, they were trying to kill my Gimlit. That was all I needed to know.
“’Bout time you got here,” he said with a grin, sword slashing against sword in a flurry of counters.
I slid through the mist on my knees, hacking the creatures in the backs of their legs by surprise from the darkness. As one they screeched their dismay, my ears piercing from the high pitch of the sound.
“Better late than not at all,” I told him, quickly coming to my feet.
“They guard your Stalker’s soul,” Gimlit stated on a gasp, his brow covered with beads of sweat I’d not noticed beforehand. His chest bore the marks of several cuts, some glancing, a few deep and bleeding heavily.
“Jirvel holds Kieran under her control. As his maker she can crush him at will, should she choose to do so. But she needs his soul and Lucien’s to set my father free.”
“A mite touched with madness, that one,” Gimlit said,
parrying another set of sword thrusts.
Like a shimmering haze of sparkling diamonds, Gimlit battled the bloodied warriors with skill and momentum the likes I’d never seen before. He was amazing and breathtaking. He was the true mad-warrior Ogre, and yet, he was so much more.
Each time one of the bulking husks would strike out at him, he would duck, swirl, parry and thrust, each strike and counter strike quicker than the last. Ugliness replaced by beauty, lumbering replaced by grace. But the creatures were wearing him down. Working separately as they were, Gimlit had to fend each one off as they came, no rhyme or reason to their attacks. No fluidity to their momentum, and certainly no meaning to their game plan. The only thing they fought for was his death, not seeming to care how it came about.
“Beyond the mist’s edge,” Gimlit stated, nodding back over his shoulder. “Your fight lies beyond the mist.”
The creatures seemed to want to have nothing to do with me. No desire to kill me, and yet no will to stop me either. It seemed their only orders were to fight Gimlit.
“Why do they only fight you?” I questioned, thinking it strange. Was I stalling, or did I truly wish to know? Did it matter? Both answers were yes.
“It would appear,” he replied with a grunt as he thrust his sword deep into the belly of one of the beasts, “that Lucien had enough sense to give them one set of instructions. One set of orders in the event her vile, wickedness turned on him as well.”
“A wise decision,” I stated, sheathing my blades. I knew I could wait no longer. Gimlit had his own battle to bear and so did I. What lay in wait for me beyond the mist was just the beginning.
“I am afraid that your fight is beyond.” I could hear the calmness of my Zen Master fill his voice. It seemed my teacher was returning, despite our desperate times. “Be not afraid, Rihker. Your destiny awaits. Now is the time to trust in the Light.”
He was right, of course. There was no more time for worrying. No room for fear. If now was my time for dying, then the Prophets take me. From this moment to the next I had to do all that was within my power to try to save those I cared for. Without another moment’s hesitation or a backwards glance, I stepped beyond the mist and into the fragments of time.
I wasn’t prepared for the shift in light, the change in scents and the transference of so many shadows. It was as though time itself rushed past me, moments and memories too quick for me to relish or remember. Some I’m sure were not even my own.
Battles, bloody and violent flashed in and out of my vision. People and creatures I’ve never known the likes of before. Buildings and places whirling like forgotten winds, forests and planes, children laughing, wolves howling. Every possible or probable piece of time and reality rushed in a haze until my mind spun, my heart reeled and I felt the entire world spin on its axis. Then, like the ripping open of a door or the rush of wind from a long closed window after a cold, dark rain, I felt Kieran pass me.
Felt him like a mother knows their child, the selkies know the sea and unicorns know the forest. His scent, his very essence poured through my flesh like my own memories until I was drowning in the taste of him. The feel of him. The lifeblood of him.
I screamed his name, and the rushing world suddenly stopped. Teetered on the brink of something immense. It shuttered then righted itself. I closed my eyes in fear. Afraid of where I would wake up. If I would wake up. Praying I would find him. Hope and fear all knotted together.
Slowly. Almost painfully, I opened my eyes to the dull glimmer of afternoon light easing its way into evening. The rich, warm smell of moist earth, lush forest and peat moss filled my senses. My she-wolf perked her ears, stirred to life in my belly. The fear dissipated. I felt a chill and dampness, realizing I stood in a pool of crystal clear water, a deep, thick forest all around.
At the edge of the pool stood a man dressed in warrior finery, sword sheathed to his side, long dark hair pulled back, revealing the strong, beautiful features I had grown to love. In his arms lay another, armor polished to a high shine, the pale length of his hair clinging to the water like sodden reeds tinged in blood.
I wanted to call out their names, but was afraid to. Unsure that if I did, what would happen. Then I watched, spellbound by what happened next.
“I’ll not let her destroy you.”
“Ah, mon ami, it is too late for me. She has already stolen all that she can from me. Do not let her destroy you as well. Leave me here to die in peace.”
“Don’t you see, Lucien? It is too late for that. She has plagued a thousand countrysides, and still she walks this earth. She cannot be left to live.”
“If you help me, she will only come for you and yours. She will destroy all that you have loved or ever hope to love. How do you hope to stop her if even I cannot? How…” he coughed and hacked repeatedly until he was spewing blood into the water.
“Do not ask,” Kieran told him. “Just drink. Drink, and live to fight again.”
I watched as Kieran willingly, like an offering only true friendship and love could ever hope to know or understand, leaned over his friend and voluntarily gave his life and his afterlife for all eternity to his dying friend.
Like a hard punch to the gut, everything made sense. That was why Jirvel couldn’t get Kieran to give him her soul. He was pure of heart...he had willingly gave his life for love and friendship. Now, that soul, despite that he was a Death Stalker, was trapped in the Shadow Lands. And that was why she had to kill Lucien. To do so would give her the keys to Kieran’s pure heart.
In an instant that sparkling kaleidoscope of color swarmed around me, overtaking my vision while I watched Lucien steal the lifeblood from Kieran’s body. Watched as his once human self shimmered with fading Light and shades of Darkness filled him. I also watched that same Darkness pour into Lucien in waves.
It was now or never.
“If you ever wish to be free of her, you will heed me now,” I stated, knowing my voice thundered across the small expanse that separated us. I watched a small army of warriors turn as one toward me. Kieran’s entourage shifting in their saddles. Horses stamping the ground while they gathered them under control.
Life was returning to Lucien in small incremental waves while it began to ease its way out of Kieran. It didn’t matter how I appeared to them or what they may have thought I was. I knew I had mere seconds to make them understand.
“Heed me strangers,” I told them, realizing they would have no recollection of who I was. “In another time, at another place far in the future our three paths will cross. A great dread will be on the horizon for the people in the Land of Light. To you, Lucien DeNote, and Kieran, I say this: Your master, Jirvel and a great Darkness will seek both of your true deaths. When they come for you their destruction will be merciless and complete. It is your souls they seek for their glory and the road to perdition.”
I watched uncertainty flow past both their eyes as Lucien pulled his bloodstained lips from Kieran’s neck, crimson rivulets coursing down his throat.
“I know not what the future holds beyond this moment of my arrival into this dark past, but I swear on the lives of all that I love that if you promise your souls to me now, by the Prophets and all that is holy, when the time is at hand I will set you free.”
A stillness much like death seemed to settle all around us. The wind itself held its breath and earth paused, waiting for their response. I could feel the blood rushing in my veins; the buzz of time whooshing in my eardrums while I waited for their response.
“Who are you?” Kieran asked, and I could sense a depth of emotion in him, memories not yet experienced. Skepticism, but a mixed sense of understanding.
Lucien just stared at me blank-faced, the haze of dark shadows beginning to fill in and around him. The time for words had passed. I had to make them understand.
Closing my eyes, I spread my arms wide and threw open the doors to both sides of my powers. Like a rushing wind, I let the Light and the Darkness engulf me. I let it fill me up like an empty cup
until I was drowning in both sides of my power. Then I took that power and released it into the coming night. I sent it out towards them as though I were casting a line direct to their hearts and minds. Kieran’s heart fluttered and faltered, where Lucien’s beat no more. All around felt like a great white static. It was into this static that I cast us, showing them who and what I was.
Like a moth drawn to the flickering light power buzzed around me. The electric charge of it hummed down my arms while memories passed between us. The water around my knees bubbled. The wind grew, whistled through the treetops with the moans of a coming storm. Light grew in the Darkness and the watching warriors shielded their eyes from me and my illuminated Light.
The power was magnificent. It danced inside me like two flames tangoing in the night. I relished its beauty and how complete it made me feel. But when I felt they had seen enough, I drew my power back like a hand snakes a whip. The crack of power flickered like lightning in a June storm-filled sky. I opened my eyes and watched the shadowed retreat of my Pixie wings. Felt the shutter of their return to my flesh and still felt awed and blessed to be given this gift from my grandmother’s power. When I looked back at Lucien and Kieran, I knew without them saying that I had their promise. But in my realm, words hold power.
“Do I have your solemn vow?” I asked them.
“You are a soul stealer.” Lucien stated, but there was no fear or anger in his voice, not even angst to follow the remark.
“I am a human and a Pixie,” I told them, knowing my voice still held the power that danced inside of me. “I am a child to the great children of the Fey and a daughter of the gods of the Moon. Within me I hold the powers of the Light and the secrets of the Darkness. I am Halfling, and I am becoming. The Prophets call me Changeling, some even call me Chosen. But to my people I am Deneau...Justice.”
I stood in the water and said no more. There was nothing left for me to say. I had shown them all I could. The rest was up to them.
“In you our future lies.” He made it a statement. “You have my promise. So be The Way.” Simply given and easily spoken. It all seemed so easy coming from Lucien. Too easy. It almost made me sad to think that I’d not the chance to know him better.