Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Joseph J. Bailey

I drew Loer’allon, her crystalline blade as silent as the void from which I imagined these juel’dara had arisen.

  Thankfully, she was nowhere near as dark.

  A tangible radiance engulfed us in liquid intensity, unwavering luminescence that lifted the spirit as well as the darkness.

  Light and hope surged through me, burning away the demonic fog that I had not even recognized building within me despite my music to the contrary.

  A chorus of celestial voices arose within Loer’allon, united in spirit and cause, their intent mine, their aim to vanquish the demons even as the entities fell from the sky.

  I joined my voice to theirs.

  Together, we roared our challenge to the heavens.

  All around, the el’amin consolidated their positions, moving inward within the halo of Light cast by Loer’allon’s refulgent blade, packing together as tightly as gravel within a compacted pile.

  They would shield each other just as Loer’allon shielded them.

  Lucius flew to my shoulder, the tension within him building like the threat of lightning on a stormy summer night, full of charge and intensity.

  Reining himself in, Lucius remained beside me within Loer’allon’s aegis.

  I held the Angel Sword aloft, daring the demons to meet me.

  In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking, but it worked at the time.

  And I was doing what I felt was best.

  Sword raised, my Voice shouting alongside the Voices of all those contained in the angelic blade, a wave of energy exploded outward from within, a blinding gout of force that dimmed the sky and blanketed my vision.

  When the coruscating pulse ended, I was surprised I had retained my vision. The sky was devoid of wraithlike demons, their ethereal forms gone as surely as if they had never been.

  “That’s good work, Ilya.

  “Good work indeed.”

  I could almost feel Maeraeth patting me on the back as he spoke.

  Saedeus shared Maeraeth’s assessment. “You did well.

  “Chances are, I would have fainted there.

  “Or fallen flat on my face.”

  “There was a time when I felt fainting was my most reliable ability in the face of danger.

  “If not for Lucius, I might not have survived long enough to learn any other response.”

  I could almost see Maeraeth nodding. “Fight and flight are not the only responses to danger.

  “Fainting is a much underrated third option.”

  Saedeus concurred. “I never heard the ground complaining.”

  “Just the occasional elemental I fell on,” finished Maeraeth.

  While Maeraeth and Saedeus bantered as though nothing momentous had just occurred, the weight of events fell heavily upon my shoulders.

  I sank to the ground.

  Or, rather, I sank to Goer’naq’s back.

  “See, she’s fainting even now,” chimed Saedeus.

  “Still an effective response,” added Maeraeth.

  “Shut up,” I replied.

  “Shutting,” chirped Maeraeth and Saedeus in near unison.

  What had just happened?

  How had that just happened?

  I was in a stupor, my mind moving slowly as though gradually thawing out after a long freeze.

  I thought about it for a moment.

  Or a few.

  The facts were….

  Demons had descended from the sky, the very essence of Darkness.

  I had raised Loer’allon.

  Her nimbus had surrounded us.

  The elementals had come together in a defensive cordon.

  I had screamed out my challenge.

  My Voice had joined with those in the sword.

  The world had exploded into Light.

  The demons were no more.

  The significance of what had transpired slowly hit me, the realization moving at the speed of my numbed mind.

  I had joined my Voice with those in the Sword.

  My Voice could be augmented by the Angel Sword!

  What did this mean?

  What was the extent of this power?

  I maintained my position resolutely on Goer’naq’s back, plopped firmly upon the obdurate stone.

  Could the Angel Sword augment my abilities?

  Was this how both Saedeus and Maeraeth had triumphed over impossible odds?

  If this was true, what else could I do with Loer’allon’s help?

  Was this potential the realization that Maeraeth and Saedeus had utilized to fashion their own visions of how Uërth should be?

  After a few moments, Saedeus answered me—far too calmly and modestly for the magnitude of the moment, I might add—with a simple, “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” I replied incredulously.

  “All of the above,” was his modest reply.

  “So, Loer’allon did all that for you?” I was in disbelief, dumbfounded by the possibility.

  “Not all at once.

  “At least for me.

  “Things moved quicker for Maeraeth, but his vision was more fully realized than mine when he met Loer’allon.

  “And his need was great at the time.”

  Maeraeth laughed. “Perhaps events moved a bit too quickly for me. At least you still have a body somewhere, Saedeus…probably.

  “But, as Saedeus says, the need was great, and I was compelled to act.”

  Saedeus added, “Loer’allon helps you grow into your vision.

  “Sometimes that transformation happens quickly. Sometimes this process occurs over time. Sometimes you don’t even know what you want to grow into.

  “It all depends.”

  Maeraeth continued, “But she does not add what you have not already envisioned or are capable of. She is bringing out the best in you.”

  “On a Heavenly scale,” finished Saedeus.

  This was too much.

  I would need to consider the ramifications of these realizations.

  Could Loer’allon help me realize my vision of restoring Uërth’s song?

  If so, what would be the best way to go about doing this?

  If Maeraeth and Saedeus were right, this culmination would not happen until I was ready and had arrived at the fullness of my intent, completing my vision, perhaps in a moment of insight or epiphany.

  So, I was waiting for divine revelation.

  If that ever happened.

  Lucius was resting beside me, his cool form a reassuring anchor after the tide of realizations that had nearly overwhelmed me, threatening to wash me away.

  I could trust in him to be there for me as he had been through most of my journey across the wilds of Uërth.

  Regardless of what I felt or went through, he would be by my side, urging me onward.

  Loer’allon and all her charges, Maeraeth and Saedeus included, were likewise with me, as much a part of my cause as I was myself.

  Slowly recovering myself, getting my bearings as my mind recoalesced, gathering from the far corners of possibility that it had been flung to unwittingly, I stood as Goer’naq rose.

  We had a journey to finish, and that was not going to happen if I laid on the ground, or on an elemental, in a dazed stupor.

  I surveyed my companions. The elemental mob seemed in order. From largest animate boulder to smallest luminous gem, the el’amin hummed a triumphant refrain that lifted my spirits as much as my revelations.

  Pointing Loer’allon ahead, I yelled stridently, “Let’s go!”

  Strangely, I did not feel the least bit silly brandishing the blade of a fallen angel and calling out commands to a band of floating elementals.

  The times had certainly changed.

  And me with them.

  Eruption

  Luecaeus had just watched the birth of a volcano.

  He particularly enjoyed observing volcanoes.

  Ranging from soothing, debris-floating lahars; bilious, steam-filled phreatic explosions; violent eruptions of molten lava; and pyroclastic flows of
billowing ash to soothingly effusive currents of liquescent rock, volcanoes offered a wondrously diverse range of subjects of interest. Hot springs, fumaroles, geysers, earthquakes, mud pots, and other phenomena associated with volcanic activity were filled with as much beauty as they were of intrinsic value.

  Volcanoes were one sign among many of the life and health of Uërth.

  And not all eruptions were cataclysmic.

  While ruptures in the crust of a planet did allow hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to evacuate from a world’s core with epochal violence, potentially bringing swift, fiery alterations to local and global systems, including climactic upheavals and extinctions, these events also brought rebirth and revival, albeit sometimes in the form of roiling, super-heated gouts of pyroclastic destruction.

  From blazing geysers of molten minerals to boiling water and plumes of gases, volcanoes were agents of change.

  Whether a change was good or bad depended, like most things, upon one’s perspective.

  From the perspective of the juel’dara, for instance, this change might be considered less than desirable.

  Much less.

  From the perspective of the surviving fluid-filled receptacles and their fragile futures on this depleted world, this change might be considered life-changing…or affirming.

  Only time would tell.

  And subsequent volcanic eruptions.

  Guidance

  We bedded down for the night in what I could only describe as a hanging rock formation perched on the side of a sheer cliff running almost vertically up the side of a colossal, craggy peak. All of the elementals clustered closely together in a sweeping bowl perhaps fifty paces wide that seemed to have been shorn from the mountainside in one great stroke.

  If the cliff face below the depression was nearly impassable, at least to someone attempting to climb rather than float up its extent, then the rock walls of the depression were even more so. The walls curved gradually upward before reaching verticality and were polished to a glass-like sheen.

  I imagined myself sliding quickly over the cliff’s edge if I tried to climb out of the small hanging valley.

  So polished was the stone that our wavering reflections were visible on the rock’s smooth surface.

  Within the rock’s vaulted walls, golden luminance stirred—smoky, chaotic, and mutable—a living cloud trapped in stone.

  Whatever was in the rock thrummed with liquid music, its rich, complex tones carrying throughout the monolithic peak.

  Unable to contain my curiosity, I asked, “What is that, Lucius?”

  It was so lovely and unlike anything I had seen before.

  “Those are the veins of the mountain, Noema’dar.

  “And, like you, they sing.”

  Lucius had anticipated my next question, for he replied before I could ask what he meant. “This mountain is alive, Noema’dar.

  “Noema’kan’s voice carries throughout the Dragon’s Teeth, for his roots are deep and his wisdom abides.”

  “We come here to commune with the mountain, sharing our lives, our stories, our dyunda and our longruen.”

  Perhaps recognizing the surprise so clearly registered on my face, Lucius added softly, “Noema’jin is not all that is sacred within our lands. Far from it.

  “This mount is not alone within our home. We come often to honor its majesty.

  “There are many such places.

  “Perhaps after our journey is done, we can return to experience others.”

  My voice but a whisper, full of emotion and gratitude, I answered his offer with the honest truth. “I would like that very much, Lucius.”

  Awed, amazed by what I could miss even in plain sight, I basked within the song of a living mountain, one whose music was too vast for me to distinguish it as a single thing. All around me, the el’amin joined together in communion, their living essences a timeless movement, the Uërth singing in full glory.

  If stars could talk and sing to one another, all the complex music of galactic interplay, this chorus is what I imagined would arise from their conversation.

  As darkness fell upon the valley, the walls glowed brighter, liquid lightning caught within the lambent stone, their permutations more varied and intense. I did not know the meaning of this interplay—whether it was in response to the elementals’ song, an effort at communication that was far beyond my ability to interpret, merely a sign of normal activity, or something else entirely, but the unfolding expression of the mountain was breathtaking nonetheless.

  Before my eyes began to grow heavy with sleep and I lost my focus, I retrieved my rune staff from my backpack, allowing its magic to hold the stave aloft vertically to form the crux of my shelter, and laid out my bedding. Beneath the protective mantle of the rune staff’s shield, surrounded by the lifeblood of an animate, sentient mountain, I called Mistress Alyendra, for there was much to say.

  “Can you hear that, Mistress?”

  Mistress Alyendra was standing within her luminous chambers, shrouded in music, her ethereal features not fully of this world though she loved her place in it. Through her, I could see a glimpse of the missed wonders of home.

  She was my muse as well as my anchor to the past.

  Mistress Alyendra was also decidedly patient with a young person continually interrupting her late at night when any sane person would be going to sleep.

  “We are gathered on Noema’kan, a living mountain! The elementals are communing with it!”

  Mistress Alyendra remained calm before the brute force of my enthusiasm. “The music of so many does much to buoy the world, Ilya. The elementals’ magic sustains their land even in the face of unrelenting demonic assault.

  “There is much you can learn from the dancing of their living essence.

  “Listen, Ilya!

  “Listen!”

  Thankfully, I had already taken my teacher’s advice, but, as she spoke, I continued to do so, for my song, though vibrant, was but a feeble reflection of the majesty of the Uërth itself when the world sang.

  Though there was much to be said and precious little opportunity to say it, we both waited patiently and listened to the interchange between the el’amin and Noema’kan.

  Some moments came once in a lifetime.

  Others made lifetimes.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours in absorption, Mistress Alyendra asked, “What else do you wish to share, Ilya? Your song bounces and bounds about as excitedly as a kitten chasing a string.”

  “Mistress! The sword sings!”

  “Doesn’t everything, Ilya?”

  She had a point.

  Truly.

  Which undermined mine just a bit.

  “I mean Loer’allon’s song merges with mine, making it greater, augmenting its facets and intent.

  “Loer’allon is like a bullhorn magnifying my Voice.”

  “And this comes as a surprise?” Mistress Alyendra asked, her tone direct and matter-of-fact.

  Trying not to sound too crestfallen, I ventured a weak, “Yes?”

  Mistress Alyendra laughed, her already luminous face coming alight. “I share your surprise and astonishment, Ilya. That is truly marvelous.

  “But you must also continue your questioning and exploration.

  “If Loer’allon can do this, what else can she do?

  “Have you discussed this with the sword or her charges?

  “This information is vital to your quest and its realization.”

  Somewhat chastened, I went from feeling like I had made an important discovery to feeling like I had failed in just a few moments. However, I did not let those temporary feelings dissuade me, for I knew Mistress Alyendra’s concerns were my own, and she had more than just my best interests at heart. I also knew that these words did nothing to undermine my accomplishment; they merely sought to further its end.

  “I have broached the subject with Saedeus and Maeraeth. We discussed how Loer’allon helped them realize their visions and grow into their potenti
al. But I have not fully considered or explored the degree to which the sword could do more or how it could best help with my Choice, Mistress.

  “I will talk with Maeraeth and Saedeus at length, for they have used Loer’allon on a scale that nearly defies imagination.”

  “And why can’t you, Ilya?”

  “I…”

  Why couldn’t I?

  Was my vision not important enough to generate such a magnificent response?

  How could I make it happen?

  “I will see what can be done, Mistress.

  “Many thanks for your guidance. Please send my love to my family. Let them know I am happy and well. Tell them that I am living the Choice I made.”

  “I will do so gladly, Ilya. You have done much to make us, and yourself, proud.

  “You are on the right path. Follow it to where it ends. Let it guide you to where a new one begins.”

  “I will do my best, Mistress.”

  “I know.”

  “Good night, Mistress.”

  “Fare thee well, Ilya.”

  With a short bow and a smile, I broke our connection, leaving only the staff standing upright before me, my vision of Mistress Alyendra gone as I gazed into the lambent gem perched atop the rune-wrought staff.

  Our conversation at an end, I lay down upon my bedding, closed my eyes, and dreamed of mountains singing each other to sleep.

  Purposes

  We set off from the window into Noema’kan with the rising sun. Brushed in pale pinks, oranges, and grays, the valley below, from its tree-clad flanks to its tortuous rocky peaks, stood out in amazing relief, at once blazingly crisp and clear but simultaneously softened by the multi-hued half-light and reluctant shadows.

  Like the sunlight rising to the east, the elementals arose silently, lifting off from where they had rested through the night. The el’amin floated in the bowl like ill-formed fog—silent, amorphous, and beautiful in their majestic simplicity. And, like the thermals moving the clouds past the peaks all around, the elementals rose gracefully and passed from Noema’Kan’s fold into the next valley beyond.

  As we flew north and east, the land grew steadily more bleak and barren. Watching the land’s transformation was akin to watching the gradual transitions in a pleasant spring day as an unexpected storm moves in, darkening the bright sky, stilling the music of birds, insects, and fey creatures, the wind whipping and rising as the day’s stillness fades away before the rush of rains and the clap of thunder. This shift held a similar transition in mood, albeit one that was entirely different in feel. Lands rich in life and vibrancy, even if damaged or impoverished, fell aside, the life drained or blasted away. Life’s music, so rich and diverse, paled, becoming but a memory of itself. The rustling of trees, bushes, and grasses, the beat of wings and hooves, and the overarching symphonic presence of so much vitality vanished as the movements of so many living things ceased. And with this disappearance, the myriad cascading influences of all those lives evanesced, worlds of activity and possibility falling away.