by Tammy Salyer
Without a hint of warning, on either side of her the two last tessalopes flared into sight. Where it had been pitch black a moment ago, their lights danced along the tendrils of their impossibly tall, trunk-like bodies, flickering and sparking. Both time walkers were staring down at her, if they did really see from their eye-lights, when she glanced at them.
Fimm continued, taking no note of the time walkers. “The Syzyckí Elementum does not require your sacrifice, Warden. It requires my last vessel.”
This statement elicited a stronger reaction, one she chose not to examine immediately. “… But I thought… isn’t the tessalope—aren’t you occupying the last vessel already?”
The answer came next. “The vessel must be where the Five Flames have burned. It is your choice to make, Warden. Become the last vessel and sing the Syzyckí Elementum.”
So it was true. As the last Ærden, this was her ultimate fate, as much as she wished it weren’t. It seemed so unlikely that she, a simple, relatively fragile being would be chosen as a vessel, especially in light of the creature now serving in the role: a time walker, massive, powerful, wystic beyond anything Mylla had encountered besides the Verities themselves. What could she possibly offer in this service that a time walker couldn’t? But what was worse—she shuddered—she was going to burn? Was that what was needed?
With her arm and the Scrylle still extended, she fell to one knee and bowed her head. “If there is any other way, Fimm, my creator, I beg you…”
“There is not.” Mylla’s blood chilled. “The Five Flames have already burned in you. Only you, in our eternities, have been touched by all the fractured Five. Only you can sing the Syzyckí Elementum.”
With sudden, inestimable relief, she understood, and the moments in her life the Verity must be referring to poured through her mind. Touched by all of them. That was it! When she’d been a child dying in Arc Rheunos, Mithlí had healed her. In Vinnr, Vaka Aster had ordained her. In Balavad’s warship, he’d infused her with his celestial venom, and in Himmingaze when the Knights had joined together to undo the banishment spell, Lífs must have in some way touched them all. Then, finally, on her trip to Ærd, she’d again been ordained, a second time, by her own maker. How extraordinary Mylla’s life had been with all its myriad encounters, and she had no trouble believing that among the realms, she was the only living person who’d experienced the presence, even the intervention, of all five celestial creators.
The relief that this meant she wasn’t about to be set afire, that she had already gone through that trial, only lasted a moment. Then reality crashed back in. If she were to be Fimm’s final vessel and, therefore, the catalyst of the Syzyckí Elementum, she may be about to discover that there are worse things than burning.
She thought of Lock’s words, whispered in her ear as he’d embraced her before she and Noble Inferno took the starpath from Vinnr. If we come through this, Mylla, I won’t ever leave you again. And if we don’t, then we’ll be together in the Great Cosmos for eternity. Just know—you’re not alone, no matter what.
But she was alone, alone and afraid. And this fate, or destiny, or curse—whatever it was—made her so. The emptiness she felt now, she wouldn’t wish on anyone. Lock, her friends, the people of all the realms, they deserved a future where this emptiness and this fear would never happen to any of them again. And it was a gift only she could give.
“I shall do as required,” she said and raised her head to stare into Fimm’s eye-lights.
The wystic creature, impossibly, rose from the throne of wood and briar. Around where it had seemed attached to the wall it sat against, the thicket of growth cracked and groaned as its branches, large and small, broke apart. The tessalope had grown into the fortress, and Mylla thought perhaps it was the fortress, and its exertion to stand after who knew how many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of turns seemed as if it could bring the whole structure crashing down. The thought flitted through her mind and was gone, however. She didn’t fear the collapse of this great building, not when the Verity had more important plans for her.
At full height the tessalope stood twice as large as the other two tessalopes with them. It bent forward at some joint high over Mylla’s head, and a bevy of vine-like ropes reached out. She expected them to take the Scrylle with its Fenestros still attached, but oddly, it merely plucked the celestial stone from its mount. Mylla craned her head to look up at the monolith, and her eyes were snared by its gleaming eye-lights. They were like Ulfric’s eyes had become when Vaka Aster was part of him. There were galaxies in there.
The next moment, she felt more than saw those lights flare, showering her in a blaze of wonder, then closing over her like, well, like the tomb she’d thought this place might become. A furious wind buffeted her from the inside, and then she did burn. A spirit-deep heat infused her from outside in and inside out in one massive surge, as everything around her grew so bright that sight failed her. She closed her eyes until it passed or she died.
Death, of course, was not her fate, at least not yet. When the buffeting heat subsided, her eyes opened to take in the fortress about her through an entirely new kind of sight. She rose to her feet, slowly, breathless at what she saw. When she’d been flying on Noble Inferno and thought she was being protected by the enchantment amplified by the Ærd Scrylle, colors had been different, stronger. Now she saw colors and lights that no human language had words for. And in the surrounding miasma, even movement and sound appeared to her in a way she could only describe as “vision” yet was anything but.
The interior of the fortress, still standing despite losing its tessalope foundation, was no longer dark to her. The feeling of it was unlimited, boundaryless, the lack of what people would call light only a different luminance to her different eyes. Still on either side of her stood the two tessalopes. And before her, the Fenestros Fimm had taken morphed into its true form, as she now understood the Fenestrii to be. Like the celestial stone in Magdaster, it dissolved to mist before her eyes, then reshaped into a matterless column of radiant tendrils. Now there were four time walkers standing with her. Fimm’s last vessel was once again an agent of its own being, and none looked even vaguely treeish any longer, with no more wandering flickers of illumination along their shapes and pools of gleaming lights for eyes. They were now ethereal, rising and spreading in every direction as waves of tinted air. In each, one thick, unbroken beam of light radiated strongly along their core. These rays of solid luminance seemed to Mylla’s eyes to be trapped within the amorphous, wavery beings, but at the same time, they seemed the only thing keeping the time walkers from dispersing completely into formless, invisible energy.
Energy. Of course, she realized. That’s all time is, all they are. Just energy waiting to travel the Cosmos again. Will they be freed by the Syzyckí Elementum? If so, it seemed that at least one good thing would come of the event. Despite their fearsome appearance, Mylla had felt deep in her bones that they were incomplete beings, trapped in an unnatural state.
These marvels held her focus for only a handful of breaths, though it felt much longer. The press of time wouldn’t allow her to dwell on them. She already knew what had happened, what was happening. Her senses were no longer only hers; she was merely the lens through which Fimm the Verity now experienced the world. To Fimm, what Mylla perceived was muted. To Mylla, it was wonderous beyond anything she’d ever imagined.
She knew the celestial being could hear her thoughts, but she chose to speak aloud anyway. “What do I do now, Creator?”
No answer came, but for the moment this didn’t concern her. Her focus was taken by the strangest sensation flowing through her limbs. Her arm moved, but she wasn’t moving it. Fimm controlled it, just like she imagined Balavad had controlled his puppets. Her first instinct was to fight. Then… she gave in. She’d chosen this, to let herself become not a person but a vessel. The Verity had taken over.
Her arm reached over her shoulder and drew Star Spark from its sheath. Mylla observed it happening,
nothing more than a spectator. The sword crossed over her front and pointed to the ground, and Fimm swung her other arm to strike the Scrylle sharply against the blade.
The celestial scepter rang loudly upon impact. Its sonorous frequency was pure, like sound made crystal, and the Scrylle vibrated in her hand like a tuning fork, up her arm and through her body. Around her, the wavering tessalopes responded and circled her in a columnar shimmer. Her body lifted—by the time walker or by some celestial force, she didn’t know—as she rose toward the fortress’s ceiling. Instead of diminishing, the depth and volume of the Scrylle’s humming increased, taking over the interior of the fortress, turning the space into an ocean of melodious sonance.
As her body continued upward, she was struck by the thought, and slight fear, that this ocean of sound would deafen her, or worse, its vibration seemed potent enough that it could shake her to pieces like shattered crystal.
Now sing, Mylla Evernal, Fimm commanded her.
She didn’t ask what she was supposed to sing. She merely parted her lips, heaved in a great gulp of air, and voiced the same note the Scrylle played.
A second later, all her fears were forgotten when the hum of the vibrating Scrylle crescendoed, and like the shattered crystal she’d imagined, the fortress burst to billions of fragments. In what was undoubtedly the greatest explosion ever seen, splinters of a forest’s worth of trees and brush flew in every direction, accelerating over Ærd’s landscape for miles and miles, propelled by speeds too great for the eye to perceive. Nothing touched her, however, and still her body ascended into the sky, higher and higher. The tessalopes, which were now amorphous waves of distortion, rose with her. Their undulating light tendrils branched and spread in every direction, higher and higher into the sky and in every direction until they were lost to sight.
What came from her was nothing human lungs were capable of, and that was appropriate. Shards of the splintered fortress hadn’t touched her because Mylla knew herself to be human no longer. Her body, like the tessalopes, was breaking apart, transforming from matter to energy, mass to power. The Great Cosmos was nothing but dust, and she was returning to it in the same form she and everything had begun as. The tessalope waves and she were all expanding, resonating to the same frequency she sang, spinning into the void of the Cosmos, growing into eternity. This was the song to unify the Verities into the One, the song of the Syzyckí Elementum. It would make them whole, even as she dissolved.
And still she sang.
Chapter Forty-Five
Shortly after Mylla traveled to Ærd, the time walker trapping Eisa in Magdaster burst apart from the middle like an overfilled waterskin. The tessalope had been solidifying slowly, its outer surface turning a layered gray-brown bark-like substance, and when it exploded, the Knights were showered with shards that pierced and poked their skin as easily as wood splinters would. They’d been watching the thing closely, preparing for what came next should Mylla not return, or return too late.
Eisa, or rather the Verity mastering her, stepped free of the now-misshapen tessalope with a gaping hole in its center. The wystic being was emitting sounds like leaves in wind that none, save Griggory, could identify or understand. The creature reached out with a viny tendril and wrapped it around Eisa, but the tendril blew apart in shreds as easily as its trunk had.
“Where is the Ærden?” the fallen Knight asked.
“If you want to get to her, you’ll have to go through us,” Roibeard said gravely.
“As you wish,” she said and instantly targeted him with white fire through her hallowed glaive.
This time, the Knights were ready, each of them prepared to fight to the death. They’d accepted that either hers or theirs was the only way this could end. Roibeard pressed the Vinnric Scrylle to the hilt of his greatsword and gripped them tightly, then swung at the fire, whispering a protective enchantment. This time he managed to deflect it.
Let me do the honors, they heard as Heart of Purple Might leaped toward the fallen Knight from his perch atop the emberflare cannon’s bore.
Before the dragør’s mighty talon could skewer her, Eisa gave a guttural shout in Elder Veros, and five Anzuru crimsons shot from the smoke-covered melee above and pummeled into Purple Might like fire-breathing battering rams. The mass of dragørs fell to the city, tumbling and ripping at each other as they smashed into a courtyard below. The wall beneath the Knights’ feet shook at the impact, and every warrior atop it knew the Weald dragørs, too harried and busy with the crimsons, would not be able to help them with this fight.
Eisa raised a hand and thrust it forward, sending her nine bloodred klinkí stones into the company of Knights and soldiers. Safran, having taken up the Himmingazian Scrylle, used its power to send her own wystic stones to meet the onslaught. The force of the stones clashing into each other shattered them all like so much friable clay, leaving Safran with only the Scrylle and a hallowed dagger for defense. Stave immediately moved up behind her. Their bond made them synchronous. She would be the shield, he the blade.
Symvalline and Roibeard moved together in similar fashion, Roi passing her the Scrylle while he leveraged the greater length of his sword. They charged Eisa as one, while behind them, the Vinnric fighters Brun, Nennus, and Havelock Rekkr and his father brought up their rear. Eisa’s glaive came down and shot fire. This time, the spear of light bypassed the Knights. Behind them, they heard cries of pain but couldn’t turn to look. Roibeard saw his opening as Eisa’s glaive was lowered and swung Ruin Hammer in a heavy arc toward her weapon arm, as Symvalline aimed a borrowed shortsword in a crossbody overhand chop.
The Knights’ attack was caught up short when their weapons struck a shield of black vapor that materialized before Eisa. The considerable strength behind Ruin Hammer’s swing sank it deep into the substance as it took on the consistency of wax. The blade barely penetrated before slowing and stopping. Roibeard tried to retrieve it, but the pliant yet glutinous ichor held on. Similarly, Sym’s shortsword remained fixed. Behind the ichor, they heard the distorted voice of Eisa laughing.
Symvalline abandoned her sword and reached over and put a hand on Ruin Hammer’s hilt, aiding Roi to wrench it free. It didn’t move. Safran stepped up and touched the Fenestros affixed to the Himmingaze Scrylle into the murk, chanting words to weaken the barrier. Before their eyes, it bubbled like boiling oil but held—for a moment. Then, with ghastly slowness, it began to soften and melt, but instead of giving the Knights hope, it only made them wonder what new unimagined weapon would come next. Stave stood to one side with his weapons ready to attack, but they’d lost track of Jaemus and Griggory.
As the substance lost its form, the Knights regained their weapons and Roi said, “When it’s clear, I’ll go first. If she’s fighting me, she can’t strike you. Aim for the artifacts in her chest, try to separate them from her somehow. And Knights, don’t hesitate to do what you have to.”
Symvalline knew what pain saying those words must have caused him, and wondered if he was offering himself as the bait because he wouldn’t be able to bear Eisa’s death. She could have told him that he would, somehow. After all, she was still drawing breath, and her own beloved was dead. But she didn’t tell him, mostly because she had her doubts any of it would matter moments from now. It was becoming unavoidably clear that they were bested in this fight.
The waxy shield thinned and pooled at their feet, and they saw Eisa bringing her glaive down to aim its caustic light. Roi put one foot back in a warrior stance, Stave the same. Sym retook the Vinnr Scrylle from Roi, and she and Safran chanted through the celestial artifacts, pulling their power into their own weapons. All of them could feel Eisa’s own power, a celestially enhanced nimbus burning around her like the core of a star on the cusp of going nova.
Then Jaemus’s voice came roaring from behind them and inside their Mentalios links at the same time: “Neither of us has ever fired one of these things before, and I don’t know how good my aim is, so I suggest everyone get down!”
> They did it, all but Eisa, who glanced over their prone bodies with eyes that widened in shock. The emberflare cannon thundered deafeningly, sending a red and orange cascade of plasma streaming directly into Eisa’s chest.
For the thump of several heartbeats, the world was silent. As the Knights’ hearing recovered from the acoustic assault, ringing replaced the silence. Symvalline was first on her feet, reaching down to assist Roibeard. Safran and Stave used each other to pull themselves up, and together they turned to see what had become of their enemy.
The emberflare at this proximity would have vaporized a human being, but Eisa was more than human and her body had been flung backward a hundred yards into the shambling ruins of the next tower down the wall. The hole in the tessalope had widened where she and the emberflare had shot through, but the wystic creature still stood. Griggory and Jaemus rejoined them, the Himmingazian wearing a complicated look of both stunned surprise and fiendish elation. Congratulations would have to wait, however, and as a unit they turned and sped over the wall in pursuit of Eisa, her fate unknown.
They found her lying amid the shattered blocks of stone from the crumbled tower. Her glaive was gone, but her skin was unmarked, and from the way her body draped limply over the wreckage, it was clear more than a few of her bones had been shattered. Roibeard picked his way speedily toward her and dropped to his knees.
“Careful, Roi!” Stave shouted, but it was pointless.
Symvalline stood beside the rest of the Knights, weapons raised and ready to attack if needed, as Eisa’s eyes opened. They’d changed. Their lifeless dull gray sheen was still present, but it had receded to what would have been the whites of her eyes. Her irises, so dark the pupils barely stood out, had returned, and they came to rest on Roibeard’s face.
“… Roi…” she whispered through lips smashed and bleeding, and the voice was once more Eisa’s own.