What I had once taken as a single light of illimitable intensity resolved itself as I approached, finally striding through its unwavering curtain as I reached my destination.
All around me, the lights of Heaven itself shimmered in empyrean perfection, the blades of Angel Swords fallen to the ground in Zion’s fall.
Reality After Dreams
I wiped spittle from my lips, too precious to squander in this barren hinterland.
The dust of a night’s sleep huddled on the dry, open ground clung to my cheeks, arms, and clothes in a ruddy haze.
Brushing myself off, I restored my wandering saliva to its rightful place and sat up with only the slightest groan.
My head felt abnormally light and clear, purposeful but keen and unblemished.
Strange.
Standing fully, I shook myself clean as best I could before pausing in wonder.
The demonic taint was gone!
The vile putridity that I had felt, real or imagined, after my ordeal with the infernal had cleared!
Where had it gone?
How had it vanished?
I squinted my eyes doubtingly, skeptical of the truth I now felt with a surety I could not deny.
I felt cleansed.
I felt remade.
Had the dream been true?
Had I actually had a vision?
Had my spell worked?
Incredulous, I did what any sane man of my vaunted stature would…I leapt up into the air and whooped, the echoing call of my voice only slightly less heroic than I might have hoped.
I then quickly clamped my jaws shut, fearing the reprisal of demons without a weapon in hand.
Thankfully, none were visible plying the skies overhead in search of lost souls to harvest.
That I might be able to travel for some time in peace and security was a blessing warranting true thanks.
Halting my forward momentum before beginning my day’s march, I spun in a circle, stunned.
My heart sank as I realized the true cost of my blessing.
For a blessing it was not.
The cost of my peace was far too high.
I stood within a graveyard of angels.
Angel Swords marked the final resting places of many divine souls.
How I had missed their many lights on my journey the day before, I could not say.
Perhaps something of the residual demonic stigma truly had blinded my inner vision.
Or mayhap the Angel Swords had hidden themselves from one yet sullied by Abyssian befoulment.
But now I could see.
And the radiance nearly blinded me.
The Light of a thousand suns shone from beneath the polished earth just as it had in my dreams.
My divination spell had merely revealed to me what I had perhaps been too blind to see.
My salvation, if they would have me, surrounded me in numbers far greater than I had ever wished to see.
That so many of the Uërthly Host had fallen protecting our world brought tears to my eyes, tears I let fall willingly without thought of loss.
If only those angels yet remained.
If only the Empyrean Gate yet held.
If only the demons were no more.
Sadly, I did not live in a world of ifs.
I lived in a world bereft of what had been.
I lived in a world of dreams dead and dying.
I lived in a world of demons and dread.
I lived in a world where men had to take up the swords that angels could no longer bear for us.
To Call and Hope for an Answer
I sat back down.
Dust scattered around my legs in roiling clouds that were absent in the sky above.
My tears fell freely, a steady rain over a land parched and dried of hope and possibility.
I might not be able to do much, but I could try.
Taking a deep breath, I opened myself, letting the calm I had felt upon wakening deepen and spread outward.
I asked for help.
I expressed my need as fully and completely as I could.
I shared my concern for Loer’allon and Lucius and their safe return.
I called to the Angel Swords.
And they answered.
Lights rose upward from the ground itself to surround me in a halo of luminosity so bright that I could not discern the individual blades themselves, only feel their divine intensity.
Seldom had I wished to be free of my inner vision, but the Swords were too much.
The Light was too intense.
Seraphic wings, auroras of heavenly radiance, and visions beyond my ken shimmered in a phantasmal haze around the blades, opening onto the infinite.
I tried to look away but there was nowhere else to turn.
Row upon row of Empyrean Knights and angels stood witness above me, each Angel Sword a projection of a multitude of former bearers, their essences its own.
I sat within a circle of the Uërthly Host.
Unable to do anything else, I accepted as much as I could of what I was given and let the rest pass.
The celestial visions began to coalesce into a single frame.
I gazed upon a place of utter Darkness, the absence of identifiable form as much an assault upon my senses as the seething wrongness of the place upon my mind.
If this was not the Abyss itself, this fell dimension was Its close cousin.
If this was what cousins were like, I was glad I did not have any.
At least that I knew.
Within this foul plane, pushed upon from all sides by the very essence of the place, a blazing white sword shone brighter than the sun above.
Orbiting about this star, a small planet whirled frenetically.
Loer’allon and Lucius.
The demon that had possessed me had somehow banished them to this place.
As hard as it was to imagine, without Loer’allon fighting the demon’s attempt to cast them out, I am sure the pair would have ended up some place much worse.
Not that where they were appeared to be anything like a vacation.
After this brief glimpse of my friends’ plight, the vision began to fade.
“No!” I reached out to them beseechingly, drawing in the Light of the Swords themselves in my need, making their energy my own.
With a horrific, bone-jarring, ripping sound, the air within the circle of holy swords tore open in an onyx vortex, the terrible Light of the Swords holding the writhing Darkness in abeyance.
From within this void, a lambent blade and a refulgent stone shot forth.
Reunited
Loer’allon hovered in the air before me, a vision of perfection yet unsullied by the travails of Hell itself.
Lucius plunked down happily in my lap with a faint puff of dust, his return as simple and unremarkable as a trip from the local market.
I bawled like a babe returned to his mother’s arms after an absence far too long in an unwelcome stranger’s custody.
Unlike my companions, I had no problems with sentimentality.
The Light pushed the swirling portal leading into Darkness inward upon itself until it finally disappeared with a decisive pop which I felt as a subtle resettling of rightness.
Relaxing now that the gateway into the nether realms had subsided, I turned a newly minted smile upon my friends. “I hate to admit it, but I missed you both.”
Sometimes letting others know how you felt was harder than feeling itself.
Their response, was, as usual, none.
Unfazed, I gathered Loer’allon and Lucius up into my arms and gave them a hug.
Which, if you’ve ever tried, is not exactly the easiest gesture.
Swords and rocks are not the most huggable objects.
Just as I am not the most huggable person.
But I did my best.
Unyielding rocks and bladed edges be damned.
Lucius regarded me smugly.
“And wipe that grin off your face. Just because you’re
back doesn’t mean you get to lord it over me.”
My weak reprimand had done nothing to dint Lucius’s mood.
But my mood was not so firm.
My joy left quickly as I regarded my reflection in Loer’allon’s depths. “We lost Alric… I almost lost myself.”
To my surprise, the Uërthly Host remained, observing our reunion impassively, the risen Angel Swords still forming a scintillating ring around us.
Was I still on Uërth?
What had I done to warrant this sustained divine attention?
Was I about to be transported to some other realm?
The situation was rather surreal.
To say the least.
To be frank, it’s not every day that one’s actions are actively regarded by the principal actors of Heaven and their chosen weapons of demonic destruction.
At least in my somewhat limited, and often misguided, experience.
The situation made me rather nervous.
Which is to say even more nervous than usual.
Which is saying quite a bit.
And not just whiches.
As I examined the depths of Loer’allon’s blade, I began to realize that my proclamation about Alric might have been somewhat premature.
As was the case with the other Angel Swords in attendance, a parade of men of noble mien, dauntless heroes of many races, and angels before them stretched backward and outward through the swords’ inner facets like a diamond whose facets link not just surfaces but people, places, and ideals.
So many regarded me from within the blades’ depths that I began to wonder if all the Swords were somehow connected.
First among those who now regarded me was Alric himself. His smile was as bright as my frown was intense.
My heart skipped a beat, or three, as he spoke. “Something of me yet remains, Saedeus.”
Miracles, it seemed, were sometimes without end.
Each Angel Sword was a Heaven unto itself.
Within each sword’s crystalline facets, the majesty of angels soared, the strength of Empyrean Guard flowed, and the ideals and gallantry of heroes persevered.
The might of the Heaven held within each Angel Sword vied directly against the forces of Hell threatening without.
Based on what I sensed of my own sword, I do not think the Alric within Loer’allon, or the Alric linked through the other Angel Swords and felt through Loer’allon, was the entirety of his essence. Rather, I think this semblance was more like a complete reflection or projection of his soul upon its last interaction with Loer’allon.
He felt subtly different and yet the same.
I felt like I was meeting an old friend for the first time. We would have to grow together once more to bridge the gap between what we had experienced separately.
If we did it once, we could do it twice.
And, if something of Alric remained in the blade, that meant a part of me did as well…which was a frightful thought unto itself.
I actually felt bad for Heaven.
On a positive note, if a part of me also abided within Loer’allon, then I imagined the me inside the sword would help bring Alric back up to speed.
If I didn’t slow him down.
If not, there were other ways.
I imagined quite a bit would happen whether I wanted it to or not while we dwelled together in the common space of dreams.
I smiled. “You are more and less than I remember.”
His smile reflected my own. “You are more or less right than I remember.”
And so it began anew.
To Begin Again
The posse was back together!
My pet rock, who, in truth, probably regarded me as his soft, squishy pet, the angelic sword that I had no right to claim, only the honor to bear, and my ghostly adviser were all with me.
I could not believe my luck or my rapid change of fate.
After all I’d been through, seeing my friends again and sharing their company was the greatest reward I could envision. Their presence filled the holes of loss and suffering that riddled my traumatized psyche.
I would be whole through them.
I would be renewed with them.
I would be remade by them.
I was fortunate beyond measure.
But I already knew that.
At least I did now.
My reverie was short-lived.
As was my vision.
The heavenly radiance coruscating around me intensified beyond reckoning, reminding me that I yet sat within the company of angels.
Or their ghosts.
Apparently angels did not like to be ignored.
Based on their social cues—that is to say, their blinding radiance—I also decided angels had little need for vision because if I stayed around them much longer I would never see again.
No words were spoken.
No prophetic visions materialized.
No portents were uttered.
Instead, the divine Light of the blades around me brightened, washing away all boundaries and conceptions.
There was only Light without limit.
Gradually I came back to myself not knowing how long I had been gone, slowly realizing that the Light was fading, returning to normalcy.
My body seemed foreign, an afterthought, something I had not visited or considered in a very long time. My throat burned when I finally swallowed…as parched as the denuded land around me.
I must have been lost in absorption for some time.
Dreading the reunion with the outside world, I carefully opened my watering eyes to the sun.
The Host of Angel Swords was gone.
Now, however, I could still sense their heavenly glow across the landscape, a cleansing fog that kept the demons at bay, one that would help the land return to normalcy in time.
At least here.
Wiping the tears from my eyes as I readjusted to daylight, my eyes fell upon the dirty rags that had once been my tunic.
A sheen of magical force shimmered liquidly, almost imperceptibly, around me, warping fluidly like the heat haze visible on the far horizon.
The return of my friends had not been enough. The angels had decided I was in dire need, or else I was such a sad case that some form of supplemental assistance was in order.
Either way, I would take their offering.
Materialized around me in what I could only think of as the concentrated Lights of the Angel Swords themselves, the sanctified blessing of the angels of the Heavenly Host, was the armor of the Empyrean Knights.
I now bore an Empyrean Aegis, a Sigil Shield of the Empyrean Knights.
I had been anointed.
Whether I wanted it or not.
Demons beware!
A new harvester of souls has come!
A Conversation
“What is death like, Alric?”
I asked questions to pass the time as we journeyed southward.
Alric refused to answer for the same reasons.
We were still in the region protected by the Angel Swords’ fall, the burial ground of angelic apparitions.
The land literally glowed with power in my inner vision.
I must have been on the outskirts of the region when the Angel Swords first made their appearance because the area we were now walking through was actually normal.
There were plants.
And animals.
And at least one shocked onlooker.
After toiling through so much land leeched of life, encountering an area that was as it had been was somewhat disconcerting. It seemed wrong…like happening upon ice floating in a stream in the fullness of summer.
I was the one out of place.
Although this stability came at a terrible cost, I was heartened to see that there were yet parts of the Southern Reaches that were still resisting the demons’ advance.
The world was alive with color and vibrancy.
Trees sheathed in symbiotic magical lattices, luminescent scales, qua
vering tendrils, variegated frills, and jewel-like protrusions sheltered clear flowing streams and still valleys. Birds called to one another liquidly, their voices a bright chorus countered by the metallic songs of insects. Fey creatures flitted in the air and darted through the undergrowth, their presence sensed rather than seen.
I almost felt like I was back home.
I wanted to be back home.
I wanted to linger and soak in the beauty, to refresh myself and reconnect with the land as it was meant to be.
But that was a trap as deadly as any demon’s.
I could lose myself here.
And with this loss, my purpose.
When Alric finally spoke to me, I knew his voice now originated from within Loer’allon but it still echoed through my mind. “Death is but the beginning of life’s last and greatest adventure, Saedeus.”
“Which does not answer my question, Alric.”
“Nor will it.”
I exhaled in frustration. Trying to get answers from Alric, either the old Alric whose memory haunted the recesses of my mind, or the new Alric who loitered within the confines of Loer’allon, was about as fruitful as trying to pull a dragon’s tooth.
If you were lucky, you did not get bitten. At worst you were eaten. Somewhere in the middle, you lost your hand or arm.
You never got the dragon’s tooth.
At least not until it was dead.
Which brought me back to my question. “So what, then, can you tell me, O’ Great Arbiter of Truth?”
“Less and more than you would wish to know, Persistent Asker of Questions.”
I think this new Alric had taken something of my sarcasm into himself.
A little too much…
Was that an unfortunate consequence of sharing a bit of my reflection with him inside the blade?
Sighing defeatedly, I asked, “What are you willing to tell me? And before you offer a droll answer that does not move the conversation forward, please tell me what you would.”
Speaking with true emotion, Alric’s voice evinced a rare passion in my mind. “I never truly died, Saedeus. A reflection of me has lived on in you while a reflection of me has also lived on through the Angel Swords.”
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 12