by Mike Truk
“Boast as you will. Make your idle promises. But your journey through Gharab shall change the tenor of your words. As you lose your companions, so shall you lose your assurance. As you suffer at the hands of Lilith’s greatest champions, so shall your arrogance be broken. And when you finally bend the knee, when all that remains is a shadow of your former self, then shall your words come back to haunt you; only then will you begin to pay the full price for your wretched temerity.”
All of this was spoken without spite, without hatred, without ardor. Instead, Morgana said these words to me in a gently chiding tone, which was somehow infinitely worse, making it impossible to respond without sounding childish.
Great resentment arose within me; of how our travails had been manipulated and controlled thus far, the hoops we’d been forced to jump through, the trials, the tests, the manifold. I felt in that moment like a thoroughbred show horse, resplendent and grand but being put through his paces. Forced to trot to a master’s tune, a servant for all his dignity and power.
Morgana’s smile remained, an eyebrow raised. No doubt she expected my rebuttal, for my continuation of our little verbal duel.
But no.
I would not play this game.
As I raised my gaze to the realms that hung in the air above us, I vowed to not play the next one, either.
There had to be a way to wrest control from Morgana, to forge our own destiny, our own path.
I didn’t see it yet, but even if there wasn’t one, I’d create a way.
“We are ready to proceed,” I said, my voice ringing with steely resolve. “Open your portal, Morgana.”
“Very well, oh noble Savior.” An expression of consideration flittered across her face as she picked up on my resolve; she could read my mind, I knew - was she doing so right now?
It didn’t matter.
If you can hear me, I thought, then know that I will cut that beautiful head from your shoulders before we are done.
The corners of her eyes crinkled in what might have been amusement; then she gestured, and a portal swirled into being before us, two yards tall and shimmering blue.
“Your journey begins in Aegeria,” she intoned, voice formal. “Your foes shall be numerous, the temptations great. Let us witness the mettle of the final Savior and his companions. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance. And remember, you have two weeks in which to reach the Fulcrum. Thereafter it shall be forever lost to you.”
My hand on Shard’s pommel, I shifted the weight of the pack on my shoulder and marched forward.
Neveah, I thought as I drew closer to the swirling blue light, find your way to us. Find us in Aegeria.
The sensation of displacement was familiar; the feeling of falling from a great height, the urge to scream - then I stepped out into a completely different world.
Gone was the gloomy hall, the clouds of swirling incense, the ranks of armored Morathi, the sense of ponderous darkness and oppressive hatred.
I stepped out onto the top of a ruined tower, whose blocks of stone were like bleached bone. Along the inside of what remained of the walls ran a mural of colored stones, depicting men and women in crimson robes leaping amongst bulls.
The sun was brilliant overhead, a great burnished coin in an otherwise empty sky that felt as vast as it was depthless blue. A warm wind blew past me, bringing with it the scent of sunbaked stone, hints of wild oregano, of sere wood and, above it all, the tang of the ocean.
Marveling and glorying in the baking heat, I moved to the edge of the square tower to peer at the land beyond.
The vista was stunning.
The tower arose from a peak, below which the land tumbled down to a horizon-spanning ocean of azure. We were on an island. Everywhere I looked I saw signs of age, from the wizened olive trees to the rounded, deeply fissured crags. The ground was arid beneath the cypress and yew trees, whose dark green canopies were in sharp contrast to the sandy ground and exposed rock.
The ocean was stunningly beautiful, the water so clear I could make out the rocky seabed around the coast below. That clarity deepened to a seafoam green that fairly glowed before darkening to azure and finally a deep, forbidding cerulean blue out away from land. There, the waves were sharp and serried, harrying the longships with great square sails that plied their path through that wine-dark sea.
Many of them, I noticed, made their way toward a point on our island’s coast just around the corner of the tower. My companions were coming through, each in turn, but I crossed the stone floor to the far wall and there peered down at another side of the coast.
A glorious settlement cascaded from the steep rocky side like a spill of white cubes, the rooftops flat and at times covered in wooden arbors, the streets winding and narrow. Always steeply descending down, down to the broad harbor, where a dozen more ships were anchored and a score more fishing vessels bobbed beyond.
“It’s beautiful,” said Emma, moving up beside me. “Oh god, they’ve finally sent us somewhere beautiful.”
“This sun,” said Brielle, turning to open her arms and raise her face to the heavens. “Oh, blast me, burn me, scour away the stink and damp of Ur-Gharab and Tagimron and Ghogiel forever.”
“A land I could live in,” said Valeria, moving to stand on my other side, resting her hands on the bleached white blocks of the ruined wall. “That ocean. Do you think if I leaped out far enough, I could dive all the way down into that harbor?”
“Look,” said Emma. She pointed to the top of the town, where a great colonnaded building stood, before which arose a bronze statue of a man in armor. “A temple?”
“Sorry, not interested,” said Brielle. She shucked her pack, dropping it on the ground, and unfastened her traveling cloak so it puddled about her feet. “I’ve not seen the sun outside the manifold in far too long. I just need a moment.”
Imogen, I saw, had retreated into what little shade a rising corner of the tower provided, and there was quickly divesting herself of pack and cloak as well. Yet where Brielle looked beatified, she looked miserable, and I could quickly see why - her black, form-covering uniform had to be stifling in this heat.
“I’ll do a quick circuit of the perimeter,” said Valeria, unshouldering Lizbeth’s crossbow and setting a bolt in the central groove. “Be a pity to die due to an overwhelming need to sunbathe.”
“Mock all you want,” said Brielle, eyes still closed. She gathered her flaming hair into a ponytail and tied it off with a thong. “But this is a priority.”
“It doesn’t have the appearance of a Lilith stronghold,” said Little Meow, slowly circling the tower-top and peering over the remnants of the wall as she went. “Lilith is rarely subtle. The land reflects her corruption. This seems…”
“Idyllic,” said Emma. “Like the Greek islands back home. What were they called, Noah?”
“The Cyclades,” I said.
“Yeah. Remember Michael’s obsession with the Odyssey back in high school? What was that movie he loved? The one about diving?”
“The Big Blue,” I said, conflicted feelings arising within my chest. “He never made it to Greece.”
“No,” agreed Emma, voice sad. “He’d love to see this though.”
“He’d miss his motorbike,” I said. Turning to her, a smile came to my lips. “Remember? He wanted to go from island to island, just driving around on his bike, living off ouzo and octopus.”
“Yeah. I was supposed to go with him.” Emma sighed and brushed her fingertips across the rounded top of the ruined wall. “Old dreams. Another world.”
Valeria peered down a stairway that led into darkness below. “Imogen? Want to give me some backup?”
“Gladly,” said Imogen, moving to follow Valeria below.
“Should we go with them?” asked Emma. “You know, not split up the party?”
“It’s all clear!” came Valeria’s shout from below. “An abandoned home. Yard outside. No sign of life. Looks like it’s been abandoned for some time.”
&nb
sp; “Guess not,” I said. I untied my cloak, folded it over my arm, then tossed it over my pack. “Goddamn, the sun feels good.”
“After years spent in Tagimron?” Little Meow finally reached where we stood and removed her cloak as well. “Where everything was darkness, rust, and nightmarishly cramped quarters? I feel almost agoraphobic. The sky’s so… vast.”
“I’m communing with nature over here,” said Brielle. “Can you all go chatter somewhere else? This is as good as life will get for the next few months, easy.”
“Why does it seem Brielle would have spent her whole life lounging by five-star hotel swimming pools back home?” asked Emma.
“Because she’s a fucking princess?” I grinned. “She’d have taken some time out for spas and flying around the world in a private jet, though.”
“You are both insufferable, beneath me, and not worthy of my attention,” said Brielle. Her hair glimmered in the sunlight as if embers burned in its depths, and her pale, freckled skin was drinking up the heat. “Fortunately, the sun has placed me in a generous frame of mind. I shan’t order your heads cut off.”
“Best princess ever,” I said.
Little Meow giggled, placing a hand over her mask’s mouth.
Valeria came back upstairs, the crossbow propped over one shoulder. “Place is empty. There’s an old road running down to that settlement, but it’s washed out and carved deep with ruts. If we set watch on this roof, we could make this a fairly defensible location.”
I turned slowly, taking in the immediate environs. We were on a peak, but not the only one on the island; a narrow range, a sort of spine, extended along the center of the island, cutting through with passes and steep valleys. Our peak was the last of that range, isolated and eroded by time, with a peerless view of the harbor and most of the island’s coast.
“Surprised this has been abandoned,” I said.
“There’s what looks like some abandoned fields just off the road,” said Imogen, who’d chosen to remain in the shadowed stairwell. “Looks like mostly dust and the desiccated remains of a vine. Maybe the crops failed.”
“Hard to say,” said Valeria, “but for once at least we’ve not been portaled into a fight.”
“By the Source, don’t remind me of Ghogiel,” said Brielle, drifting over to a lower segment of the wall and there leaning back on her elbows, head tilted toward the sun. “We arrived right in the middle of a pack of Gray Mongrels.”
I began to pace. “We’ve got to change this up, guys.”
“Change what up?” asked Imogen, smoothing her black skirt out over her knees as she sat on the third-highest step.
“Everything. We’ve been allowing ourselves to be guided, told where to go, what to do, and when. Pass five trials. Go to this tower. Pass these five tests. Now we must go through five realms, fighting our way through increasingly difficult odds to get to the Fulcrum.”
“Yeah?” said Valeria, arching an eyebrow. “But what choice do we have?”
“Remember what Isossa said?” I asked, turning to face her. “We always have a choice, and that’s our power. We just think we don’t.”
“I don’t get it,” said Emma. “I mean, I understand your frustration, but we have to get to the Fulcrum. And the realm we’re in only connects to the next, and so forth, like a chain. Right? So what choice do we have but to fight our way through it?”
“I don’t know. But there must be a choice. A way to take control. We’ve been too passive up to this point. Too willing to play the enemy’s game. Jump through the hoops and suffer for it. You saw how smug Morgana and Emelias were. They fully expect us to get fucked and come crawling back to them with her escape portal. And each time we do, we’ll be weaker, more desperate, more open to corruption.”
My companions considered my words in silence.
“So no, I don’t have an answer right now,” I said. “But I want us to all keep an eye out. A way to change things up. To take control of this process.”
“But what would that even look like?” asked Emma. “None of the sanskaras allow for teleportation, right Imogen?”
“Hexenmagic does,” said Imogen quietly. “But I believe its range is limited. We’d not be able to transport ourselves across realms. So, no. Our magic won’t do it.”
“Like I said, I don’t know yet what it will look like. But I just want you all to adopt a certain frame of mind, a way of looking at the world. I want you searching for advantages or a means to free ourselves from this manipulation we’re always working under.”
“Fair enough,” said Brielle. “I resent being toyed with as much as any other. If we see an opportunity to take control? I’m all for taking it.”
“In the meantime,” said Valeria, staring down at the settlement, “what’s our plan?”
I moved to stand beside her. “We need to find this Khalistria. Looks like we’re on one island of many. She might be down in that temple, or maybe on another island. Either way, we need to find out. And I want to find out now.”
“Now?” asked Brielle, finally cracking open her eyes to stare at me reprovingly. “Can’t we just enjoy this sun in peace and quiet for ten minutes?”
“Now,” I said, slinging my pack over my shoulder. “We’ve had enough downtime these past few days. Now it’s time to get to work. Let me reach out to Neveah, and we can get going.”
“Agreed,” said Imogen, rising and dusting herself off. “The sooner we leave for cooler climes, the better.”
I sat, back against the wall, and closed my eyes. Dropping into my reservoir effortlessly, I oriented on Neveah’s portal. I willed it to open and floated to its aperture, peering inside.
There was the same morass of corruption, like the cancerous innards of a rotting toad. Neveah hovered as always, hanging in her fetal shape, Morghothilim plunged through her chest.
The sight sent a stab of remorse through me, but I put my emotions aside.
Neveah, I pulsed at her, sending my words like a missive across time and space. Can you hear me?
I waited, giving it a few minutes. Then I backed away, allowed the aperture to close, and opened my eyes.
“Nothing,” I said.
“How is she going to follow us here?” asked Emma.
“I’ve only known Neveah a short while,” said Little Meow. “But something tells me she’ll find a way.”
“Agreed,” I said. “If anybody’s capable of fending for herself, it’s her. We’ll just have to trust that she’ll keep pace. Speaking of which - time to go.”
In short order we filed down the stairway, entering the blessedly cool darkness of the house. It was little more than four walls. The ground was made of great paving stones, the rafters hung with withered garlands of garlic.
Back out into the brilliant sunshine, we paused only for Imogen to check the environs with her geomancy before nodding the all-clear.
The further we walked, the more we sought to roll up sleeves, bundle up cloaks and store them in our packs, and open our tunics at the neck. The wool that had protected us so in the dank depths of Tagimron now weighed down on me, scratchy and oppressive. The urge to go bare-chested was strong, but I ignored the discomfort and led the way.
The road was indeed a rutted ruin, a gulley carved down its center by previous rains. But the countryside was a delight; crickets whirred and leaped from underfoot, and hawks hovered high above as if pinned to the sky. The countryside beguiled the eye with hollows, glades surrounded by wildflowers, tumbling drops, and the ever-present whisper of the ocean dashing itself against the white cliffs below.
The others picked up on my intensity and walked in silence, their attitudes wary. I found myself counting on Neveah to be scouting ahead of us, or shadowing our flanks, and had to keep telling myself she wasn’t there - we weren’t defended by her vigilance. Each time, I felt a pang of loss.
Our descent was swift, curling along the coast toward the settlement. It disappeared behind the curvature of the island, only to finally reveal its
elf once more as we crested a promontory and stopped, the ocean at last directly below us.
“I want to retire here,” said Emma. “Once we’re done saving the universe. Can we do that? Get a little house, run a winery or something?”
The settlement descended the mountain slope to a bay, whose central channel was dark but otherwise shallow and inviting. The waters revealing the rocky floor with startling clarity; the bright blue hues of the sea, aquamarine to seafoam green, were gorgeous. The whole coastline invited exploration, from the various fissures and cave entrances, to the narrow beaches of dark honeyed sand that were hidden like gems in alcoves secreted amongst the cliffs.
“Anybody else feel like diving down into that water?” asked Valeria, wiping at her brow.
“That’s a thirty, maybe fifty-yard drop,” said Emma.
“Yeah?” Valeria grinned at her.
“Just… saying. So - no? I’d be happy to climb down to that little beach, though.”
“When we’re done,” I said. “For now, we keep going.”
“Noah’s going to become very unpopular with the masses if he keeps up this no-fun attitude,” said Brielle from the back of the group.
I snorted, pressing on.
The road followed the coastline, and we passed the ancient remains of a watch-fire set upon a leveled boulder. The slender tower was abandoned; weeds and lichen grew over the set logs.
“Nothing to watch for, I guess, now that Lilith’s won,” said Little Meow quietly while we passed it by.
“Let’s take a moment to observe,” said Valeria as we crested the final rise before the road descended to the waterline and then on to the town. “No rush to run in.”
Down the road went, impossibly steep at times, to finally level out just above a long spit of rocky beach that curled around to the first narrow pier of the city. The stone docks were burnished by the sun; wooden steps lowered to wharves, and floating platforms rocked with the sedate tide. Palms rose here and there, their heads crowned with golden and green glory, while richly dyed cloths of blue and purple were draped over pergolas set before white-washed buildings. There wasn’t a clear demarcation between the docks and the lower stretches of the city; I saw squares abutting the docks, streets leading right down to them, a few paved, most of the just of sandy dirt.