The Ravens of Death (Tsun-Tsun TzimTzum Book 4)

by Mike Truk

  Down we descended, in silence, down to that domed chamber where Valeria and Alusz had awaited me before.

  Now it was empty but for the plinth and the two objects of power upon it. The darkly dense pyramid and the black diamond.

  “Is that…?” Emma moved forward, releasing Valeria’s arm. “Is one of those the Fulcrum?”

  “Yes,” said Valeria. “Alusz… she said…” A moment passed as she mastered herself, a moment as she pressed her forearms to her eyes; then she squared her shoulders and stood up straighter. “That there were rules. Rules to this engagement. That if you managed to reach this place, the Fulcrum would be here. That she couldn’t take it away.”

  “And the other?” asked Brielle, moving to stand before the plinth.

  “She called it the Chasmstone,” said Valeria, tone dull. “I don’t know what it is or does, but the… masked… creature of hers left it here before going upstairs to face you.”

  “The Chasmstone?” I tried to repress the leap of excitement within my breast. “That’s the artifact the Nithing-Lord was trying to crack, right?”

  Emma’s eyes shone. “The one C’toh said could bring people back to life?”

  “Hurry.” My tone was terse, my whole body tense with fear and excitement. “Bring it over here.” And I moved to one of the stone steps to set Aspara’s body carefully upon its length.

  Brielle joined me a moment later, the huge black diamond in hand. “How do we use it?”

  Imogen moved to my other side. “C’toh said he and the others obscured its purpose so that the Nithing-Lord couldn’t wield it. Perhaps… it might be akin to the Manifold. Approach it in such manner?”

  “Guide me?” I asked, settling down into a cross-legged position, diamond cupped in both hands.

  “Of course,” said Imogen with a smile, and sat beside me.

  I sank into my reservoir, and a moment later Imogen emerged from her aperture.

  I can sense the Chasmstone… much the same as I did the Manifold. But it… hmm.

  Yes?

  I can… C’toh wasn’t speaking in jest. The whole of it is obscured, hidden behind… a wall? I can’t even get a grasp on the protection.

  Then Neveah was there, slipping out of her aperture in turn, her form resplendent, radiant.

  Perhaps I can be of help, she said. Sahaswara allows me to approach such objects with greater awareness.

  Like the Obsidian Plinth, I said.

  Neveah nodded, reached out, and took my hand. Come. Follow me.

  She pulled me… not in any one direction, but inwards, or so it felt, so that my reservoir faded away and was replaced by a vast void in whose center hung a nullity, its presence marked by a drab, horrendous pressure that made me certain the Chasmstone lay before us even though I couldn’t see it.

  There, said Neveah, and together we flew toward that empty darkness, a void more strange and terrible than the nothingness around it.

  I trusted Neveah completely, and allowed myself to be guided. Tried to remain calm, to restrain my hope.

  The wild, desperate hope that we weren’t too late to bring Aspara back to us.

  I sensed our momentum slow, Neveah’s hesitation increase, until at last we stopped.

  There are a thousand ways open before us, she said. But all of them are crooked and deflect away. To push forward is to be defeated.

  There are? I gazed into the nothingness. It was like trying to read the velvety darkness behind my eyelids. I don’t… but all right. How do we proceed?

  Neveah raised a glowing hand as if to press it against a doorway. I… this trap is intricate indeed. The more I push forward with my senses, the more of me it drinks in. Like a giant drain, or sieve. It cannot be defeated by brute force.

  Makes sense, I said. Or the Nithing-Lord would have broken their way in ages ago.

  Neveah frowned, deep in thought. The Wights wrought their magic well. It is a most subtle trap. A labyrinth. To take a step forward is to immediately be deflected. There is no direct approach.

  I couldn’t see anything before us. Just a dusty immensity, a vast blackness.

  Well, where there is darkness, I’ll bring the light, I said, and drew forth Shard. On impulse, allowing my instincts to run free, I pointed the blade forward and willed a beam of golden light to cut through the shadows.

  Shard blazed forth, and its golden light banished the dark, forming a tunnel through that void, cutting through with consummate ease.

  It’s working, said Neveah, with as close to breathless wonder as I’d ever heard her. The defenses, they’re melting away as if…

  As if they were never meant to defy the Savior, I said with grim certainty, and with a touch of Manipura, willed myself to fly forward, leading the way now, through the hole I’d bored through C’toh’s defenses, following Shard’s illumination, right into the core where the Chasmstone hung suspended.

  It glittered as it slowly spun, but where its earthly counterpart was jet black, this one glowed as if hewn from the Source’s own crystal web, a large, perfectly cut diamond of utter radiance and power.

  Gazing into its depths was perilous - I could feel my spirit being pulled into it, summoned into the Source’s grandeur. That old danger that I’d first experienced in Ghogiel, and each time since upon reaching the very essence of the Source’s power.

  The allure of losing yourself to something far greater and more wonderful than you could ever understand.

  But Aspara’s face arose before me, and I found myself thinking of her gentle nature, her endless generosity, how she’d given to us again and again without asking for anything in return. In this vast and terrible universe we’d been traversing, she was one of the few truly good people I’d met.

  Aspara Saechu, I whispered, and her name left my lips to be sucked into the void, into the bosom of the Source, sent into the depths of some unfathomable dimension. Aspara Saechu, come back to us. Come back to us, please.

  We hung there in silence, considering the great diamond, and each interminable second was infinite while it lasted, each beat of my heart tolling out an eon of doubt and uncertainty. Was there more that I was supposed to do? Was there more that the Chasmstone demanded?

  I didn’t know. But my intention was pure, and I found within myself a burgeoning love, a desire to see Aspara’s eyes once more, to hear her wry voice, her subtle humor, to learn about her past, to heal her present, and forge with her a beautiful future.

  If the Source needed more from me, than I was at a loss as to what to give. So instead I simply reached forth with my love, and then felt, to my endless joy, a pulse of awareness reach back to me from within the Chasmstone, a pulse of consciousness and awareness.

  Noah?

  Tears sprang to my eyes at the sound of Little Meow’s voice. She sounded confused, as if lost within some dream.

  Little Meow, Aspara - it’s me. Come back to us. We need you. I need you. I… I love you. Please. Come back.

  Noah. A softer word, more an exhalation than anything else. A long, aching pause, and then: I come.

  My heart thrilled in my chest, the tears burned in my eyes, and the diamond began to glow, brighter and brighter, so bright that it lost its edges. I shielded my eyes with my forearm, was forced to turn away, and then blinked as I was pushed out of that realm, and back into my body.

  “She’s moving!” Emma’s cry was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Blinking away the blindness and motes of white light that hung in my eyes, I rose to my knees and gazed down at Aspara’s face.

  Which was growing animated once more, a line furrowing between her brows, color stealing back across her skin as her chest began to rise and fall once more.

  “Noah,” she whispered, and I took her hand in my own, squeezing it tightly as I fought a hitch in my chest, a knot in my throat, the tears that blinded me.

  “I had such a strange dream,” she murmured, turning her head to look up at me. “That I was dead or dying, and floating down this endless river,
and all about me was endless glory… and this… a person? I think? Was waiting for me, or… not a person, but…” She frowned, shook her head slowly. “It’s fading. I can’t… remember.”

  “You came back,” I said, voice little more than a ragged whisper, and slid my arms around her to hug her tight.

  “Of course I came back,” she protested, face pressed into my neck. “I heard your voice? I’m pretty sure I heard you calling for me. And you said…”

  “That I love you.” I squeezed her tight, still incredulous, unable to believe she’d been returned to us. “By the Source, I can’t believe… I mean, it worked, and you’re…”

  Words failed me. I simply held her tight, and then finally sat back, rubbing away the tears with the back of my wrist. “You’re back.”

  Little Meow rubbed at the back of her head as she slowly at up, swinging her legs around as she did so. “Of course I am. Where did you think I… wait. Did I actually…?”

  Emma didn’t give her a chance to complete her question, but swooped in to engulf her in a hug, squeezing her tight and nearly knocking her over in the process. “You’re back from the dead!” Then she pulled back, hands on Little Meow’s shoulders, as if to check that all of her was really there. “And Aspara? What a beautiful name! Why didn’t you tell us before?”

  “Unless you want us to keep calling you Little Meow?” asked Imogen, and she raised her old cat mask. “We can, of course.”

  “I…” Aspara looked overwhelmed, her eyes wide. “I… died?”

  “Just a little,” said Brielle from the side, arms crossed, a smirk on her lips. “And it didn’t stick.”

  “Here,” said Imogen, and set the mask in her lap.

  Aspara considered the mask. Took it up, turned it around. “This… it’s been such a burden. Something I took up years ago, but which… ever since… no.”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes again, and she looked up to regard me, to consider our whole group. “How could I continue to wear a mask amongst you all after all we’ve been through?”

  And she snapped the mask in half, cracking it down the center between her fingers, and allowed the pieces to fall to the floor. “How did it take me so long to realize I could trust you?”

  “You got there eventually,” said Brielle.

  “Trust is a… surprisingly hard thing to hold onto,” said Valeria, reaching forward to place a hand on Aspara’s shoulder. “Don’t sweat it. At least you’ve found your way here at last.”

  “My name is Aspara Saechu,” said Aspara, eyes filling with tears. “By the Source, I never thought I’d say that out loud again.”

  “Aspara Saechu,” I said.

  “Aspara Saechu,” said the others, one by one, as if affirming her new self, her new reality.

  Aspara’s tears brimmed and ran down her cheeks, and then she laughed, the sound at once helpless and delighted, before she wiped at her cheek and turned to me. “You saved my life.”

  “No,” I said, grinning like a fool. “I merely asked you to come back. You’re the one who chose to return.”

  “I’d have been an idiot not to,” said Aspara, and she leaned forward to hug me tightly, squeezing me so hard I had to dip into Manipura to avoid being crushed.

  She pulled back. “To give up my best friends? The life I thought I’d never get to live again? I… I don’t know what I did to deserve you all. But… thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Imogen, with such a profound and simple happiness that she spoke for all of us.

  “So… we won?” Aspara looked around the chamber. “We did it?”

  “We did,” I said. “Reached the Fulcrum and everything.”

  “Which Alusz left behind,” said Brielle, turning to regard the dark pyramid. “Something I still don’t understand. She could have just taken it with her. Especially since we cheated by skipping the other realms.”

  “No.” Valeria studied it as well, brow lowered, gaze troubled. “She… I don’t know how much of what she said I can trust. I knew most of it to be lies. But I gathered that the nature of Gharab was meant to grind you down with meaningless victories. That only Pelleas saw through that trap and found a means to leap to the end. Obui and Jevenna, they failed to grasp the nature of this trial, and thus failed… but…” Again, she took a deep breath, as if simply returning to those conversations, those memories of her time spent with Alusz were akin to drowning. “But if you grasped the nature of the trial, and leaped to the endpoint, you hadn’t cheated, but rather seized victory in the only meaningful way possible.”

  “Ha,” I said, my voice without humor.

  “Well done,” said Imogen, moving over to slip an arm around my waist. “Well done, my love.”

  We subsided into silence, all of us staring at the Fulcrum.

  “So, this will take us to Malkuth?” asked Emma. There was none of her customary trepidation in her voice, just curiosity, a question wrapped in a newfound assurance and calm.

  “Yes,” said Imogen. “The last sphere.”

  “Lilith’s sphere,” said Brielle pensively.

  “What happened to your hair?” asked Valeria.

  “What happened to your hands?” asked Emma with a smile.

  “Tell you later,” said Valeria, her own smile bittersweet.

  “At long last,” whispered Imogen. “I can’t believe we’re finally here.”

  “Malkuth,” said Emma. “Given how terrible every sphere’s been, I don’t even want to guess how bad Lilith’s home will be.”

  “Awful, I’m sure,” said Brielle. “But nothing we can’t handle.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Emma, face cracking into a smile.

  Valeria coughed, pushed her shoulders back. “I… I want to… apologize, I suppose, and -”

  “No.” The authority in my voice silenced her. “You have nothing to apologize for. Nobody here does.”

  They all stared at me, and I thought I saw shadows of guilt or doubt flicker across their faces.

  “We’ve all done our very best, and by the Source, it has been more than enough. We’ve fought across deserts of ash and urban horrors. We’ve suffered the most personal of onslaughts, we’ve nearly died time and again, and none of us would be here without the others. And despite it all, despite Lilith’s every attempt to break us down, we’ve never been stronger. Never been more ready to take her on.”

  My gaze danced from one face to the next.

  “I look at you six and feel nothing but awe and wonder. I’m honored to have you all by my side. I know each of you better than anybody I’ve ever known. I know your weaknesses and past. I know where you’ve failed. But that only makes me love you more. I know what you’ve overcome. Your trials. Your victories. I know what it’s taken for you to get to this point. All of us have suffered and suffered badly. All of us have sacrificed far more than we should ever have done. But we’re here regardless. Lilith has thrown her worst at us, her greatest warriors, her most terrible traps, has sought to turn us against each other, to break us, to force us to our knees.”

  Their eyes were shining, every one of them, as they listened to my words.

  “But for all her efforts, we are unbroken. For all her efforts, we stand more united than ever. In my heart five cords of fire burn, each connecting me to one of you, and if the Source allowed me a sixth, Aspara, I know it would lead straight to your heart as well. And I know without looking that your apertures stand open, and will remain so, open to my soul, to the Source, and that its power flows through me to each of you without end.”

  There were flickers of confusion and doubt, then Imogen’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re right.”

  “How so?” asked Emma. “So much has happened so quickly that I’ve lost track. What’s happened?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” asked Imogen. “Your magic?”

  Emma frowned, then her eyes flared open wide. “You’re right. It’s come back to me.”

  “I felt it when Valeria and I overcame Alusz�
�s trap,” I said. “Felt the last barriers between us all fall away. Remember how we could embrace within my reservoir to power up? Siphon energy directly from the Source? Now we don’t even have to do that. The Source is giving us freely of its might. There’s no end to our reserves. We can fight on now without ever running out of magic.”

  Imogen placed her hand to her brow as if stunned. Brielle frowned, blinked, stared down at her sword. Valeria studied her palms, and even Neveah seemed taken aback.

  “No limit to our power?” Imogen’s voice was but a whisper. “I’ve never heard… that’s…”

  “I’m telling you,” I said. “We’re ready for this. Everything that’s happened up to this point has been preparing us for the final sphere. All our weaknesses, our doubts, our fears. We’ve faced them down. We’re finally open to loving each other completely. Without reservation. I know everything about each of you, and you know everything about me. And instead of breaking our bonds, that process has only made us stronger. I love you all more than I can ever say. And trust you, not just with my life - which I did right from the beginning - but with my soul. Lilith can no longer pry us apart. She can no longer corrupt us. Her claws will find no cracks in our souls, and that’s why I know we’re ready for Malkuth. No matter how bad it is, no matter how hellish, we’ll conquer it.”

  “Amazing,” said Neveah, voice low with wonder. “I never… I thought because of my… my curse… that I’d always be a liability. That I could never trust myself, much less allow you all to make the mistake of trusting me.”

  Everyone regarded her, listened, waited, as she wrestled visibly with her emotions. Her jaw clenched and relaxed, nostrils flaring, eyes filling with tears.

  “And I thought… I thought I’d have to kill myself before Malkuth. That… that for all my strength, I was our group’s greatest weakness. But… Noah’s faith in me. His trust. His love. When… when Alusz used those words of power…”

  The tears brimmed and ran down her cheeks. I fought the urge to move over to her, to hold her. But I waited, giving her the space she needed.