Just let the darkness come.
It seemed an ominous call to make into the night. Especially here.
Meeroth had been kindly even after his refusal at the library doors. He’d set his guest up in a lavish bedroom that must have belonged to a favoured Cleric. Its walls held tapestries depicting legends and battles from hundreds of years past. The head librarian had sent up food and drink and bidden him good night, asking for a conversation on the morrow, where they might discuss the War of the Overlords.
‘You don’t realise just how wrong your version of events really is,’ he said cryptically. Naus suspected information would not be as forthcoming as that had indicated and resolved that his best option still lay in the library.
When he had not heard a sound for thirty agonising minutes, Naus judged the temple had fallen under the night’s heavy spell. An assassin’s favourite time, the period in which he was most used to moving around. On soft soles he crept from the bedroom chambers and was grateful the halls were paved in stone and not wood that might creak and groan alerting the remaining Clerics.
He reversed his way back through the temple labyrinth, his sense of direction faultless; he saw only one lonely Cleric, a withered old man silently dousing candles as he made his way up to bed. Naus avoided him with ease. He felt like an intruder into the termite mound; one wrong move and the creatures would swarm him.
Eventually he reached the library and prized the wooden doors open as silently as possible. There were lights on inside. Cursing under his breath, he scanned the room and balconies quickly. The lights were dim, simply large jars placed on the desks and boundaries of different sections; each jar held a small group of fireflies, most dimmed and asleep.
Naus could not see a single person anywhere in the stacks, in amongst the shelves, on the balconies, nowhere. He sighed with relief and using the scant light began to browse the arrangement of the shelves. The room smelt of dust and paper and that intangible something infused within the ink and the page. Knowledge.
What was he looking for? Something old, something that talked about the forming of the Order? Or something like a biography, a history of the Goddess? Even if it were written by a pious Cleric, anything like that could hold priceless information.
He found histories of the major cities of Arceth, some long since ruins, treatises by famous generals on how to assault and war on any terrain, medicinal recipe books and apothecary indexes. He found a book called An Arceth Bestiary by Amphithaus Potisf III, which listed hundreds of the creatures of the world, how they came to be named as they were and a page or so of useful information regarding behaviour and traits. The Medusi species section was extensive, even listing Medusi that Naus knew to be bio-engineered by the Order. He suspected Potisf was a Cleric, or if not, he was very friendly with the Order. A valuable tome, even if it had been written less than two hundred years ago. He needed something older, at least double that.
Soon, instead of reading titles and spines, he began browsing the covers themselves, the wear and tear, the erosion of the leather bindings, looking for tomes that were in worse condition that the Bestiary.
Near the back of the library from the entrance, and next to a strange hole in the wall, he found a gated section; the volumes inside were all decaying and falling apart. Naus tried the gate and couldn’t find a lock. He shoved it carefully and it jarred open with only the smallest of metallic creaks.
Flicking one of the glass jars made a satisfying chime and brought the fireflies inside to life, adding a low hum from their wings and an appreciable brightening to the section. Naus could see to read the spines by the greenish glow, but most were so old as to be indecipherable; ink had worn away, raised and stamped portions had retreated back into obscurity, pages had warped and torn. The leather of most flaked away in his hands. The Clerics valued this knowledge, but even their best efforts were as nought against age and entropy. He felt a grudging respect for Meeroth and his predecessors keeping this knowledge alive for as long as they had.
Naus’ eyes alighted on a particular volume and he prized it carefully from the shelf. He blew the dust from the cover. It was called The Power of the Overlords, but the name of the scholar was long lost. It looked like a copy had been made; the original book dated back to the time of Eleutheria. Naus opened it, breathing in its scent and smiling; it was possible it hadn’t been opened in centuries. It wasn’t strictly what he was looking for, but it was about the Overlords; he could compare the fate of the Overlords with his own version and see if Meeroth’s comment about his errors was valid.
As he browsed the pages, working his way towards the back and the War, he kept noticing the author speaking as if the Overlords were indeed dead but in a manner that made him think there was more to it. Why would Velella’s prophecy talk as if the reign of the Overlords could finally end with Totelun, when it had already ended so long ago? Suspicious, he turned to the end; the final chapter was titled The Fate of Magic. Naus read:
Though we have discussed the fate of the Overlords in some detail, this final chapter explores what happened to their magic.
Some still insist that Eleutheria destroyed the Overlords during the final years of the war, first by defeating Cepheus, and then by allowing the Overlords to tear themselves apart in their greed and ambition. They were humans once and unable to contain and control their own base natures.
This is not in fact the case. The real history of the end of the war is shrouded in mystery and deception. A clever and manipulative use of history written by the victors, propaganda in its infancy, but used with a deft and cunning touch.
Eleutheria ordered an official history to be written to encompass the entirety of the war, her reign as she wanted it told. Naturally this glossed over many of the more troubling aspects of her rule as first Empress, including mass executions and betrayal, her infamous harem and any indication of her progeny.
It is my duty to record the real events, the ones that I suspect in a few decades, will be lost. Once the official history is accepted and taught, generations will grow old with no knowledge of what truly happened, and its ramifications on the fate of magic.
Much of the official history I have seen is close to accurate until the final battle. Eleutheria led an assault on the stronghold of Cepheus, Lord of All Overlords, believing the only way to win the war was to destroy Cepheus himself, as had been prophesied by Velella.
In truth, Eleutheria had lost almost her entire army by this point. Her only remaining son and his army had been raised into the heavens by the gravity magic of Minakun. Eleutheria hid herself and gained access to Cepheus’ fortress, meeting him in combat atop the highest tower in his castle. She fought like a madwoman, so intensely did she believe that the only way to win the whole war was to defeat him. The fight went badly for her; she is known to have been injured gravely by Cepheus’ superior duelling skill. But at the last moment she prevailed, stabbing him and then as he knelt in pain, chopping off his head.
Eleutheria’s armies were almost lost and would not stand against the remaining Overlords. She doubted Velella’s prophecy. If only she could find more power somehow.
This is where official history and reality truly diverge.
Eleutheria bent to temptation in that tower. Her lust for power and control were too strong for her better judgement. She was not the Empress she portrayed.
Cepheus had controlled his thralled army through the magic he was afforded by his Medusi. Eleutheria bore witness to the huge Medusi that had thralled him many decades before, removing its tentacle from the back of his neck. She seized both the tentacle and the opportunity, bowing to the creature and holding the thralling spear to her own neck.
Naturally, the Medusi took full advantage and took her for its thrall. Eleutheria gained the power of Cepheus that day, the power of Coercion. Some say her wounds healed, though there is no evidence of this, and many later sightings describe her as horribly disfigured.
And so, we see, despite the death of an Ove
rlord, the magic they wielded could be passed to another, inherited by the next thrall. The magic a Medusi can give is inherent inside itself, in the crystal at the heart of the creature.
We are concerned with the fate of that magic.
Eleutheria took up her new army of thralls, taking the enemy armies for her own, and destroyed all the remaining Overlords, many on the battlefield, but some also through subterfuge and assassination. She could not absorb their power, so as each of the Overlords were destroyed so their power was lost. It still resided within the Medusi that held it. Eleutheria made note of the beast that held each type of magic. The bigger the Medusi and the bigger the crystal, the greater the power.
The power of the Overlords lives on inside the Medusi. Each and every species holds a power of its own. Each thrall who gains even a small gift of magic holds a tiny fraction of that power. The magic of the Overlords was never lost. Though their bodies died away, their magic remains in each and every Medusi in this world.
*
Naus searched his own memories of the time.
He had walked away from Eleutheria before the pivotal battle with Cepheus, and by the time he had tried to return, the battle had been finished; Eleutheria had returned to Theris to consolidate and recuperate after destroying all seven Overlords. Her guards would not admit him.
Shortly after this he heard she had disappeared into the East, and he had begun his own long walk. Everything the nameless scholar had said could have happened. Naus had no way to prove differently.
The time she returned to the city was when she would have commissioned the official history to cover how she’d won the war.
Naus had never seen her after he’d betrayed her, all his information was second hand. He had searched for her on the road. He had kept his eyes open, his ear to the ground, but the official version of events had seeped out so fast. Only the closest to her would have known the truth. If she’d stayed a recluse she could have hidden the fact…
That she was a thrall herself! Let’s not skirt around it, he thought. If you can’t be honest with yourself then with who?
He had heard another version of events where she died fighting and her death had been kept from her subjects for years, until a suitable heir could be found and a dynasty begun. The Nectris line.
But a thrall. He’d never heard that before. The rest of the book petered out into scholarly discourse about the nature of magic and where we might still find the Overlord’s magic in the world today. But as it had been written almost a thousand years ago, the references were pretty opaque even for Naus.
He closed the tome and continued along the same shelf.
His mind was racing, putting things together. Was there some way that the same Medusi had been passed down from generation to generation somehow? Eventually resulting in the Order? Surely there was more to know.
Part of him couldn’t quite grasp that Eleutheria, his Eleutheria, had become that which she despised the most. A thrall. She had railed and preached against the Overlords and their filthy power so many times; for her to turn and take their power from Cepheus was almost unthinkable. She had been disgusted when Naus had described his own thrallings to her.
But what had happened since? Had she somehow passed that power on further, on down the generations?
Finding the answer to one thing only led to more questions, it seemed. But he had one answer – where were the Overlords now? They really were dead, but their power lived on in the Medusi, in the Celestials, in the Cephean, in Cassandra, and Chrysaora.
And somehow, in the Medousa.
It was clear that Abrax held the power that had once belonged to Heikriss. Abrax wasn’t an Overlord, but he had access to a large concentration of the their power through his being thralled to a Celestial.
After a few moments scanning spines, he found it; the book he should have started with. The Return it was called, but the subtitle hit harder; On the Establishment of the Order of the Medousa and the Return to the Original Race. As he flicked through the pages he could see the bulk of the book was dedicated to more of the Order’s insane diatribe regarding the joining of humans and Medusi into an original creature that had been split apart in some indeterminate creation myth. It was the central tenet of the Order’s teachings. But towards the beginning there were chapters on the Order itself and how it began.
As he opened it on the table under the light of the fireflies, he heard something.
Shoes, creaking wood, the shunt of metal. A sword being drawn. Naus shut the book quietly and peered round the gated section to the grand doors.
‘I knew you were trouble, Arcturus,’ said Meeroth. He was standing by the doors surrounded by armed Cephean guard who moved past him and fanned out into the room. There was no other way out of the chamber that Naus had seen. He was caught, and to make it worse, unarmed; Meeroth had taken his sword earlier in the day. ‘Sneaking around our temple, after how welcoming we were? You are a thoroughly disagreeable old man, aren’t you?’
He addressed the guards. ‘Now kill him.’
Chapter Twenty Nine
Anthrom
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Anthrom was concerned with someone else’s wellbeing more than his own. Not that he’d have admitted it if asked. The street urchins that he’d coaxed and, if he was honest, tricked into the palace, were now at the mercy of Noctiluca.
And it was his fault.
Up until now, his spying had always been for personal gain or his own morbid curiosity, but this time he needed to know what was happening to them, if not for their sake then at least for his own sanity.
There was a weight on his chest, worse even than he’d felt when he’d been forced to apply the final merciful cut to dispatch Verismuss. That time he’d been coerced, under her spell, almost strung along like a puppet – he’d had no choice. He knew Noctiluca’s power first-hand.
This time he had delivered innocents into the taloned clutches of a sorceress. Verismuss hadn’t been innocent, not by a long shot; he’d started Anthrom down a dark path that he was now finding it was impossible to back away from. But with the children, Anthrom had given them over knowing full well what he was doing, in order to aid his own advancement, prove his own loyalty, and achieve, what?
He was going to be thralled. Part of him welcomed it with open arms, acknowledging the power that would soon be his, but there was still a part of him that, when he was away from Noctiluca, still found her repugnant, still wanted to escape her influence, wished he hadn’t killed Verismuss or that stupid maid, or tricked these poor children. It was just that the voice was getting smaller and smaller. It was easy to ignore and only assailed him in his quietest moments.
With the children, he didn’t even have the excuse of being under her sway. He could have left them alone, he could have run, disappeared into the underground and left the city. But he had chosen to come back.
He had to know what was happening to them.
Since moving down to the throne room he had once claimed as the King Under the City, Noctiluca had been all but impossible to spy on. He had been reduced to waiting at the door with all the risk that included.
Today though, he had gone one better; Anthrom had stolen into one of the adjacent rooms within the sealed underground suite, of which the throne room was just the centrepiece. He was away from the main entrance and already inside when he heard the children brought forth once again into Noctiluca’s presence.
He had been told in no uncertain terms not to continue spying on her. If he was caught, his punishment would be severe. But he couldn’t help himself anymore. It was like when he found out about his father from listening to Thaddeus and his wife. It was a physical compulsion. He had to know what Noctiluca would do with the children. Wend, Shin, Thix. And Urth. He had left the door just slightly ajar so that he could crouch behind it as the children shuffled past.
Anthrom watched transfixed as Noctiluca stood and brought the children in close. Somehow, they weren�
��t scared of her; they didn’t squirm or call out as she embraced them, they didn’t run. Though he was glad they weren’t fearful, there was something very wrong about it, something incredibly sinister about being close to her at all. He remembered Urth as rebellious and cheeky, wearing his reactions plain; now he stared, eyes half-lidded, a beatific smile on his young face, gazing up at the sorceress like he was hypnotised.
Come closer, my special ones, said Noctiluca. Do not be afraid.
Even the stragglers moved toward her. Anthrom had long suspected his mind was not truly his own while in her direct presence, but watching them he knew it to be true. He could see it in their eyes. She influenced when she spoke into your mind, her voice coerced and lulled – she was a sorceress and it was a spell she cast. It wasn’t just the power to implode skulls, this was an altogether more subtle art.
But in the end, what did it matter? He would do as she bid, the same as the rest.
You are to be my personal spies within the city. Each of you will join with your own individual Cephea. You will become my eyes and ears.
They were all to be thralled? He had caused this. At least he knew they weren’t going to die, but thralled, all of them? He’d plucked them from the street, from a hard life certainly, but at least a kind of freedom, and chained them to Noctiluca as completely as if he’d locked the manacles himself.
You will seek out the leaders of the rebellion. Listen to them, let me listen to them. Listen for those speaking out against your mother, so that we can correct them.
He had ruined their lives. He felt guilt, but there was no retribution, there was no punishment. He wasn’t in trouble. As long as what he did was in service to Noctiluca said, he need not fear reprisal.
In this way you will serve your Goddess.
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 40