I think I preferred harvesting mushrooms.
“Call out to the knights and they will bring you into their fold.”
Alric’s words were a whisper, his voice in my mind so soft I was not certain if he had spoken or if I was remembering his thoughts as my own.
Deep down, I knew he had spoken.
Opening myself as I had when I became Light, I sought outward not through myself but through Loer’allon, who was my connection to the Empyrean Knights and all they embodied.
Loer’allon became the conduit of my intention, casting my mind adrift on uncertain wings of need.
For dramatic effect, I pointed her august blade toward the Keep of Kerraboer—a lightning rod in search of a storm.
I do not know if the Empyrean Knights heard, but the forces of Darkness certainly began to take an interest.
A mass of swarming Darkness separated itself from the swarm hovering on the periphery of the necrotic cloud.
It was too far away to see clearly, but I sensed enough of the demonic presence to know that I was in for whole worlds of hurt.
There were far too many for me to do much other than run. Even if I could somehow defeat all the infernals swooping toward me from the skies and loping over the rough terrain on an intersection course, more would follow.
Then more.
And still more.
I could not hope to defeat the entire mass of gathered hellspawn on my own.
Could I?
Now that was an interesting question to consider.
I needed to stop acting like the man I had been and start acting like who I was.
Now.
Right this instant.
“Be patient, Saedeus. The demons are not yet upon you. There is still time.”
Time for what?
If I was not going back to take shelter underground, then I was going to pile a mountain of demonic corpses so high that even the knights on the parapets of the Keep of Kerraboer would have to look up to see me boldly striding its peak.
I do not know how to describe what happened next.
All the voices in Loer’allon, all the Empyrean Knights manifested in the blade, all the lives Loer’allon had touched, reached out to me and brought me into their fold.
I was a single note in an indescribable chorus that filled the firmament with purpose, holding the demonic cloud aloft, preventing it from touching down and directly engaging the knights and their allies at the foot of Kerraboer.
I was a single scale in the hide of a vast, implacable dragon that swooped its mighty head back and forth, blazing ruin upon the Chaos Gate and any demons that dared to enter our realm. My mighty claws smote ruin upon the advancing flanks of demons, scattering their ranks into the dust. My wings beat the foul demonic sorceries back while my colossal tail swept whole contingents of demons from the field of battle. My impregnable scales sheltered the allies of Light beneath my breast, protecting them from the worst of the demonic assault.
Without even a thought to resist, I was drawn into the heart of the dragon.
Kerraboer
The mantle of the Empyrean Guard held me.
I was a mote in Heaven’s eye, a speck on the field of battle and the entirety of the realm containing it.
The forces of Chaos lashed and struggled against my might but could gain no purchase.
Instead, they slunk and snuck around my periphery, finding their way into the wider realm of Uërth beyond to wreak havoc and destruction upon those unable to defend themselves.
Even then, I would send parts of myself after these usurpers, but the infernals were too many, their ravenous numbers beyond the Chaos Gate without end, and I was too few.
Many of those knights I sent did not return.
Fewer still came to replenish the numbers of those lost.
The more knights that left my fold, the weaker I became, the less able to stem the onrushing tides of Chaos hammering at Uërth’s beleaguered shore.
Time and attrition were wearing me down.
Eventually I would fall.
Just like Heaven before me.
“Saedeus, chosen of Loer’allon, arise and be met by your ken, your brethren in arms.”
What exactly was happening?
Was I dreaming?
Had these visions been a stress-induced flight of fancy?
Or was someone actually talking to me, calling me back from my reverie?
My voice was hoarse, cracking as I spoke, all the while trying to stand, bow, and orient myself at the same time.
Without falling flat on my face.
Which was the anticipated outcome of almost any amount or type of physical exertion on my part.
“I am here, my liege.”
Liege?
Who was I to call anyone liege?
In Balde no one would even claim me and now I was claiming someone I did not even know?
I stood shakily in a vast cathedral, the walls lost in the play of light on and within the clear, unblemished walls. Sunbeams formed pillars for columns that were not there.
Except for one other, I was entirely alone.
Despite this, the space was full.
Full of potential.
Full of spirit.
Full of certainty.
Full of rectitude.
Full of promise.
Full of my brothers who, like me just moments before, were here but not here.
They were what made the continued existence of this place, the storied keep of Kerraboer, possible.
I, too, was here to help.
Before me stood a man.
He was, however, like no other.
Or at least no other I had ever seen.
I did not dredge my memory for his likeness or equivalent because that did not matter.
He mattered.
His presence was a testament to the very reason we all struggled.
Like the sidhe, he was an ineffable mixture of Light and corporality. But, unlike the sidhe, he had been born a man and had become more.
He was a bridge between Heaven and Uërth.
He was a link to our past and our future.
Just as we could not let him fall, he could not let us fall.
He was Chalmeire the Bright, leader of the Knights of the Holy Sword and Lord Ruler of Kerraboer.
How does one describe a being who looks like he is made from liquid light?
Large, haloed, and impossibly bright?
Brilliant, otherworldly, and scintillating?
Amorphous and somewhat inchoate?
Hard to look at and resolve?
In need of shading?
I think he had a beard.
Did he shave?
Could he shave?
Lord Chalmeire’s form wavered and flitted like a campfire...in slow-motion...without a breeze...or fuel for the flames...or radiated heat.
So, in sum, he was unlike a fire even though his appearance brought to mind qualities of fire.
Or, perhaps more accurately, he was like living light.
With a beard.
That he might or might not be able to shave.
And luminous armor with a blazing holy sword the size of wooden bar across a high lord’s locked castle door or a beam in a not-so-modest cottage.
Whether he was more like a fire or light, he was transparent, which I suppose also made him a bit like glass but of the molten variety given his fluidity.
Which is not necessarily transparent but often shares colors with fires.
As I have so eloquently elucidated, the leader of the Empyrean Guard resembled nothing more than a campfire of molten glass cast from living light.
I am perhaps a better experiencer of the divine than its describer.
Especially when I rely on made-up words to make my point.
Apparently I was delusional.
And I had not eaten any mushrooms of the magic variety.
Which meant I was in serious need of rest.
Or its equivalent.
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If I were able to focus my mind for more than an instant, I would cast a spell to restore myself.
Beginning my incantation, I muttered a few words before falling face first onto the crystalline floor.
The luminous tile mosaic was, I decided, surprisingly warm.
Second Impressions
I was flying.
Clouds streamed by in pearlescent tufts, the vapor cool on my skin as it rushed past.
The ground was far below, a lush carpet of green unsullied by smoke, demons, or ruin.
I was as light as the air and as free as the sunlight warming my back.
As I swooped through the clouds, my grin was so wide I worried my cheeks might cramp from overexertion.
My smile muscles were rather atrophied and unused to being called into action, especially without a good warmup first.
The minutiae of life on the ground was of no concern, trivialities left far behind and away. I had no care or concern other than this moment of flight, of blissful exhilaration and untroubled abandon.
This, I decided, was heaven.
I never wanted to leave.
“Saedeus.”
The wind whispered my name.
I ignored it.
“Saedeus.”
The earth below called me.
I tuned it out.
“Saedeus.”
The sun above beckoned.
I had better things to do.
“Saedeus!”
My eyes jumped open in alarm as my pulse raced.
I was flying.
At least that had not been a dream.
I was floating above the floor in the vast chamber within the heart of Kerraboer.
The shimmering floor wavered and shone with innumerous lights coalescing in and out of shapes I could almost recognize, from subtle geometries to whimsical patterns.
Lord Chalmeire waited before me patiently, as indescribably radiant as ever.
I certainly hoped he had not been only waiting for me.
Given what I now understood of the interlinkages between Empyrean Knights, I was fairly certain he had not been unoccupied.
With the decidedly preternatural clarity of mind of one roused far too quickly from slumber, I also determined that he did indeed have a beard.
I further decided something else.
I was embarrassed.
I had fallen flat on my face in exhaustion before arguably the most important person in the length and breadth of Uërth.
At least I was consistent.
No one could claim that I treated meeting him any differently than I did almost any other significant event in my life thus far.
So, instead of being embarrassed, I should probably be proud.
I was egalitarian in the grandest sense of the word.
Even if by accident.
Wiping the drool off my chin decisively, I wondered exactly how long I had been out.
“But moments, Saedeus.
“Lord Chalmeire refreshed you since you did not do so yourself.
“He also gave you the gift of a complete restful sleep over a much shorter time than normal.”
Alric’s words were of little comfort.
I still could not figure out how he cut that beard.
Maybe that was what his great sword was for.
I could see Lord Chalmeire’s bright smile and knew then and there that he, too, was reading my mind.
Could no one stay out of my head?
Was it as open and drafty as my old hovel?
“If you let your guard down and open your doors to guests, they will come in, Saedeus.”
Was I not entitled to the sanctity of my own mind?
“If you scream out at the top of your lungs, anyone nearby will hear what you have to say.”
Alric had a point.
I reined my mental dross in and stilled myself.
The time had come to make a better second impression than I had with my first.
I opened my mouth to begin, but Lord Chalmeire beat me to it. “Loer’allon has shown us much of you, Saedeus.
“We are honored to welcome you into the fold.”
I was taken aback.
I had expected to be tolerated.
At best.
Not respected.
I cleared my throat, embarrassed once more.
“Lord Chalmeire, you honor me by your consideration and esteem.
“In all honesty, all I had originally intended to do was try to return Loer’allon to her rightful bearers after Alric fell. I wanted to honor Alric’s memory by passing Loer’allon on to one worthy of bearing her.”
I cracked a half-smile. “I guess I failed in that.”
Catching myself, I added quickly, “My lord.”
“Loer’allon alone is the judge of who may bear her.
“She has chosen.
“I trust her wisdom, for it is far greater than my own.”
Talk about humility.
After that compliment, I was not exactly feeling humble.
But I could pretend.
Lord Chalmeire could command the entirety of the Empyrean Guard with a single utterance, and he had deferred to the sword on my back.
I trusted her judgment as well.
If I had learned one thing on this trip, it was that many were far wiser than I.
My sword included.
My pet rock, on the other hand…well, I did not plan on deferring to Lucius any time soon.
Earthworm Knights had to have a little self-respect, after all.
“What would you do now that you have returned to Kerraboer bearing the wisdom of Alric upon your brow and the heft of Loer’allon upon your back?”
That was an easy one.
“I will charge the maw of Chaos and make it choke upon its own blood.”
By the look on Lord Chalmeire’s lambent face, I think my second impression made up for my first.
A Battle Waged and Lost
After my rather understated offer to volunteer, I did not get to stay in Kerraboer to partake of her copious wonders for long.
I was not surprised in the slightest.
I just wished that for once I had kept my mouth shut or tempered my enthusiasm a bit.
Though I could recall and experience the marvels of Kerraboer through Alric’s memory, I wanted to do so through my own eyes.
My mouth, however, had cut that opportunity short.
Already bearing an Angel Sword and a Sigil Shield, there was little to be done for me in the way of provisioning. I was, however, offered what I thought of as a last meal in the commissary.
The dining hall itself was far grander than any temple to the Light had any right to be. If knightly dining halls were this fine, I could not imagine what the Empyrean Knights’ halls of worship were like.
That was not true…I knew exactly what the Empyrean Guards’ halls of worship were like. They varied as much as the people who employed them, ranging from the heavenly—suitable for the direct expression of the majesty of the divine—to the simple, reflecting the presence and actuality of spirituality in each moment.
I took the opportunity to worship the glory of food presented before me.
Although I knew every morsel I consumed had been summoned, created, and refined with arcane Craft—there was no time or place for fields and harvesting with an army of Chaos flooding your lands and spilling around your gates—I imagined the dishes had been lovingly grown and prepared by the hands of farmers and passed on to skilled artisans with all the love I had once given to my fine mushrooms.
After I slew the beast of Chaos, mayhap I would go home and retire to a life of fungiculture. There was nothing quite so nice as eating what you yourself had grown or procured.
Much to my surprise, instead of preparing me for the battle ahead, the heaping plate of steaming food made me pine for home.
Not one for sentimentality, at least not when every fiber of my being cried out against the foolishness of my intended course of
action, I wolfed down my meal and left the hall as quickly as possible, no longer as awed, or distracted, by its miracles.
Food, it seemed, was the great equalizer.
It grounded me in the past and helped me realize the significance of the present.
I was about to risk throwing my life away, regardless of whether it was for a noble cause or any other justification, losing access to my past and all its joys and travails, without proper appreciation and reflection.
A bit of rest and a full stomach had cured that.
Now I was not only so scared that I had to run to the nearest facility to relieve my bowels, but I was missing the very things I had once blithely disregarded.
So much for my carefree pronouncements and predilections about battle.
I was just another chicken who wanted to go home.
Sadly, home was too far away to matter.
And, more importantly, if I did not act on my original intent, however crazy this resolve might be, there would not be a home to go back to soon enough.
So it was with a newfound sense of purpose fueled by an overwhelming urgency that I charged into the gentlemen’s room prior to taking the field of battle for the most momentous event of my life.
If I rushed the front lines like I did the bathroom, the throngs of Chaos were in for a rude awakening indeed.
On the Front
The army of the Empyrean Guard and their allies were unlike anything I had ever considered as a child, even one growing up in a world of magic. As a youngster, I had imagined troops, movements, formations, and battalions arrayed in shining colors, heroes clashing at the fore against the malevolence of Chaos, but this army held very little of that imagery.
True, there were troops to be seen, myriad warriors arrayed across the field of battle, fantastical forms alight in arcane energies, but those were the exception. Rather, the allied armies of Light appeared as unencumbered lightning flashing beneath ominous storm clouds, Empyrean Knights who danced with Darkness in Light.
Overlooking the battlefield, occasionally surfacing from this tempest of Light, mighty dragons whose auras shone like the sun, resplendent sidhe wreathed in the glory of yaera’l, and flickering dryads wrought of snowflakes and stardust, among many others, soared overhead while the massed, luminescent troops of numerous races and peoples seethed in bursts of brilliance below.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 18