by Joe Ducie
Maybe that meant it wouldn’t work, but I had to try.
Emily looked at me as we hovered just above the summit of the Vale Crystalis, an empty tower, an antenna, keeping the Void at bay. “Well, hero, what now?” she asked.
“Scan the area,” I said. “Can we do that? Sure we can. I want a cave in one of those mountains, the more hidden the better, and the bigger the better—a cavern.”
“What’s the play, Declan?” Tal asked, as Emily turned back to the control column and began shuffling glowing crystal buttons about. The screens on the wall showed topographical maps of the area, and started to zoom in on certain mountains, scanning the enormous piles of rock and snow.
I tapped the celestial illusion in my pocket. “Spot of gardening. Is she following, Emily?”
Emily said nothing, concentrating on the console.
“Astoria?” I said, an edge to my voice.
“Yes,” she snapped. “You’ll have your chance to hurt my sister soon enough.”
It’s my party, I thought, I can cry if I want to. I left Emily be and took a seat next to Tal while she worked, offering her my hand.
Tal didn’t take it. She hauled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this.”
I thought of about a dozen things to say, from reassurance to worry, and chose to say nothing, which was a touch of that wisdom again, that sharp spear of sanity. Emily worked away up at the control column. I didn’t want to just sit around, so I got up and went to the bathroom at the rear of the shuttle. It took a good few minutes, but I scrubbed the dried blood from my hands and forearms, from under my fingernails, rubbing the skin raw. Looking in the mirror, I caught splotches on my face, dried flecks—some of it my own, from the fight—and cleaned that away, too.
“I think I’ve found what you need,” Emily said. The shuttle glided away from the Vale Crystalis and toward the north west, over hill and dale.
Emily landed us on a sloping hillside, just above the foothills, of a mountain overlooking the valley and the towering silver spire built by the Vale, those enigmatic blue aliens. Exiting the shuttle, millions of stars overhead and a fat moon lit up the hillside, and revealed three crudely curved obsidian stone pillars. The pillars didn’t seem natural—perhaps something Vale-related—and were warm to the touch. I sensed the potential within, the foundation of possible enchantment. Portal stones, I thought. Grown portal stones.
“Which way?” I asked Emily. My words echoed on the air, down the mountainside. Birds and animals that hadn’t ever heard a human voice startled in the night.
Emily, standing just in the doorway of our transport craft, pushed an interior button and a half dozen beams of light emanated from the roof of the shuttle, lighting up the hillside and a good chunk of the forest below. High beams. Neat.
“Up there, Declan,” she said, directing a single beam toward our destination. “See that canyon cut between the two rising thrusts of stone? If we follow that, scale a few boulders, you should find what you came to find.”
“Very well.”
The walk was pleasant, if a little eerie. It still blew my mind that this was True Earth, ten thousand years or so before I’d be born. Time travel was a dangerous thing. One I could get used to—and that was a scary thought. I was a man held together by regret, after all, and little else. If I had the opportunity to undo some of those mistakes… I shook my head. No, it didn’t work like that. I couldn’t pretend to know the rules, but there was no changing the past—or, in this case, the future. What happened will happen, because of what we did now, not despite it. I created my own problems, and so would have to create my own solutions.
Which made time travel, now that I thought on it, not so dangerous—merely part of the narrative. Still, still… I wondered. If I pushed hard enough, could I snap the thread, retie it toward some brighter, less bloody future? Dangerous thoughts, after all.
The canyon was narrow, and as Emily predicted we had to haul ourselves up and over a few low-lying boulders, gripping the mossy-wet walls for purchase. Tal cast a few spheres of light to hover above our heads and illuminate the way. We twisted and curved, Emily ever so graceful, until we reached the entrance to a vast cave system.
I cast one of my nets of detection, half-expecting a cave troll or something equally absurd to hamper our way, but the net came back negative. We entered the cave, Tal thrusting her arms forward, casting another half dozen spheres of light, floating orbs of warmth and white radiance. The light illuminated the entrance to the cave, a small plateau a few feet above a massive cavern which stretched back, and back… beyond the edge of the light.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, this will do nicely.”
Emily tilted her head, listening to something only she could hear. “Ashaya draws near, Declan. We have minutes, at best.” She met my eyes and I saw something merry dancing in hers. “Are you ready?”
I hefted my sword onto my shoulder, like it was the barrel of a shotgun, and retrieved the orb of celestial illusion from my pocket. “Guess we’ll find out. Where do you think, Tal? I think that small pedestal near the centre of the cavern will do nicely.”
I hopped down into the cavern, my two companions—one a stunning beautifully goddess, the other an Everlasting—watching my back.
Water drip, drip, dripped overhead, forming small cool pools on the stone. I stepped carefully but quickly across the cavern and reached a naturally smooth jut of rock, a tiny dais, about ten feet across by the same wide. Stalagmites, tapering columns of calcium deposits, rose in a mini range of mountains around the dais.
I stepped onto the stone and knelt at its centre, brushing the cold surface, feeling its pulse. I summoned a globule of hot fire, liquid energy, then took a step back as it heated up, first red-hot then white-hot, and turned the stone to slag, to molten rock.
“This better work like I think it does, Axis, you blind bastard,” I muttered. Once the smoke had cleared, I held up the orb of celestial illusion and then—plunk—dropped the priceless gemstone into the fast-cooling melted stone.
Something, some foreign urge, came over me, and I whispered a small prayer, though even through my surprise the words felt strong, powerful. In a language I didn’t know, had never heard before, would never hear again. I stepped back—stumbled—off the dais, almost falling over a small stalagmite, as the entire platform shone with ethereal light.
Seconds ticked by like the slow turning of the earth itself.
From the centre of the dais, a perfect stem of glowing crystal breached the cooling stone and stretched up toward the roof of the cavern, like the first tiny shoot of a plant breaching the soil. I relaxed. I didn’t know what to expect, what a good sign looked like in this caper, but that had to be one.
“OK,” I called across the cavern, “I’d say that—”
A wave of rippling, greasy purple smoke surged into the cavern, a torrent of dark energy speckled with black oil. A beautiful young woman rode within that wave of power, bright-eyed and pixie-faced.
Dread Ash of the Everlasting. Fix, that was.
She howled through the cavern, shook the foundations of the mountain, and when her eyes fell on me they narrowed. “You!” Her feet barely touched the ground as she ran at me, a storm of menace clouding her movements. “You blinded my brother!”
I braced for the attack, for the impact, shielding my face with my arms, but it never came.
Tal stood in front of me, holding Ash in a binding of power I’d never seen—something unique, clever. She held one hand up against the Everlasting, smooth light flowing from her palm and into the shackles, and in her other hand Tal held one of my swords, the blade covered in runes.
I had a sneaking suspicion—no, a terrible certainty gripped me—and I knew what was about to happen mere moments before it did.
“I learnt this trick from Oblivion, bitch,” Tal snarled, and the light in her palm changed, darkened. She wrenched a mass of purple shadow from Fix’s body, from the fo
rm the Everlasting had chosen, and with a wild sweep of the blade forged in Atlantis severed the purple entity from the whole.
“Tal, Tal, no…” I said. I tried to move but the force of power rolling off Tal as Ash struggled, as her power buckled, couldn’t be surmounted.
“This one’s my job, Declan,” Tal whispered, and stepped back over the stalagmites and onto the pedestal that held the blossom of celestial illusion. “You think you’re the only one who hates them?”
She grinned at me as Fix’s body—Ash’s vessel—disintegrated.
I laughed—it was, perhaps, the saddest sound I’d ever made.
Tal stepped back onto the growing stem of celestial illusion and tossed the rune blade aside. It whistled over my head and I ducked to avoid its infinitely sharp edge. She looked at me once, for what would be the last time in a very long time, and then released Ash from the impossibly complex net of Will that had snared an elder god.
Robbed of her form, Ash did exactly as Tal had expected her to do—she possessed her. The purple shadow roiled into Tal, just as the celestial illusion under her foot seized her ankle.
“No…” I whispered, already knowing it was too late.
Dread Ash and the celestial illusion claimed Tal at the same moment—the silver-clear alloy rising up her legs, sealing her in an immense crystal of divine light. Ash had enough time to assume control of Tal, to understand what had happened, and spin her new, stolen eyes to find me before the crystal solidified and trapped them both in the eternal prison.
That hadn’t been the plan.
Not by a long shot.
I had hoped to ensnare Ash, yes, but not at the cost of Tal.
“You stupid…” I began and trailed away, not knowing whether I was talking to myself or Tal or to the gods that weren’t listening.
I stepped closer and placed a hand against the cooling crystal of celestial illusion. Already other tendrils, stems and blossoms, were creeping across the cavern. I couldn’t stay here, not without being consumed and imprisoned alongside Tal. Perhaps that would be for the best…
I leaned down and collected the rune blade.
Emily Grace, Ash’s sister, stood in the entrance to the cavern. She hadn’t lifted a finger to stop what had just happened, not moved an inch as the purple flood of malice her sister had rode in on had taken away the love of my life.
I probably should have felt angry at that, but I didn’t. Already a plan was forming in my head, a way to undo this mess. It would take… well, it would take thousands of years to pull off. And would mean releasing Dread Ash, which wasn’t ideal. Good. Luckily I had thousands of years and specialised in less than ideal.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Declan,” Emily said. “Truly.”
I scanned the entrance to the cavern, spied a boulder with a small groove in the base back against the eastern wall. I shoved the rune blade under that boulder, leaving just the hilt sticking out. That would do—no one would come here, I’d make sure of it—and even if they did, they wouldn’t be looking for a sword.
“I haven’t lost anything,” I said.
Emily read my thoughts. “You cannot release her, Declan. You would need to wait until the celestial illusion is done growing. To tamper with it now… would be catastrophic.” She glanced at my hidden sword. “What are you planning?”
“Feels right to leave it here,” I said. “Perhaps the blade will gain a boost from the celestial illusion, the beginnings of another Roseblade to replace the one I destroyed.” My chin trembled and I gritted my teeth together. “Perhaps, if Tal awakes, she’ll need something to protect herself.”
“Tal is lost, Declan,” Emily said. “Ashaya will devour her mind, torment her for as long as they’re entwined.”
“She’s survived that before.”
“What will you do now?”
“Head on home, I suppose,” I said. “Back across the Void, to the future, to my time, and undo this travesty. I will save her, Astoria. I swear it.”
Emily said nothing, though her eyes said enough. After a long moment, “I admire your tenacity,” she said. “Hope in the face of hopelessness. A final resolve.”
THE FINAL RESOLVE
What Have We Not Fucked Up Yet?
“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange
roof, thinking of home.”
~William Faulkner
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
UPON THE LILAC PRECIPICE
(And the world did applaud your folly)
Half a mile of burning mountain behind us, half a mile of burning mountain ahead, rising to a snowy peak already being licked by curls of smoke, steam, and fire from the scorched cavern within the mountainside. Small tremors, little aftershocks, of the ignited celestial illusion shook the ground, sent boulders tumbling around us, snapped trees from the hills, and made our going slow.
I’m coming for you, Tal.
“And that brings us to now,” I said, mostly to Annie, though Caitlin and Arlon were listening on in, of course. Should they survive what lay ahead—and I would do my best to see it so—they would relay the truth of my sordid plan to the Atlas Lexicon. I was responsible for everything that had happened here over the last two days. “You see the choice I have to make, Annie, what it’s all been for.”
“You may have to kill Tal,” she said. “If Ash won’t let her go, you’ll have to imprison them both again.”
I climbed over a shaking boulder, scrambled up a small rock fall. Only the energy from the sword sustained me now. My aches and pains, pierced shoulder and broken ribs, were distant but getting closer, returning—on the express train to pain. Before long, I’d collapse. This had to end before then.
“I never meant for this to happen. I just… wanted to stop the Everlasting. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Tal made her choice,” Annie said. “She chose to stand with you. I’m making the same choice.”
To that, I had nothing to say. She was right, but that didn’t make living with the cost any easier. If anything, I should have been better, cleverer. “It was a multifaceted plan,” I said. “All clever and conceited. Tal was never meant to suffer, not again. I’d have died first, but like she said… I don’t die. I go on.”
“You drew Dread Ash in,” Annie said. “So you could defeat her, like you did Axis, and if nothing else you’d have a cavern of priceless celestial illusion to come back to.” She sighed, half-breathless as we climbed the mountain, taking twisted paths to follow Ash’s trail.
“It was a trap with benefits, yeah,” I said. “Should have known better.”
“And Ash is stuck here? Tied to the Lexicon?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t actually plan for that, I think it must be something to do with the grove of celestial illusion, being imprisoned in it for so long. So long as the grove exists she can’t stray too far. Or maybe its Tal, still fighting for me.”
“You don’t sound sure of that, and not to forget you just set that grove on fire.”
The mountain groaned, strained its burning joints, as if to drive the point home. I nodded. “The tether will snap—she will be freed, before too long. We have to wrench Ashaya’s essence from Tal before that happens.”
“And make her pull down the shield before it eats the world,” Annie said.
“Yes, thank you. The two go hand in hand. If we defeat Ash, wound her enough, the Everlasting may be beyond actual death unless they give up their grace, as Emily did, but she won’t have the focus, the strength, to maintain the shield.”
Arlon grunted. He looked at me with something approaching disdain. “All or nothing then, is it? And all we must do is destroy an elder god. You make it sound so simple, Arbiter.”
I shrugged and grinned. “Standard Tuesday afternoon most weeks for me, Arlon. Chin up, they’ll write stories and sing songs about us after this.”
He looked troubled at the prospect. “You, perhaps, Hale. The rest of us are just along for the ride.”
Caitlin, breathing heav
y and hard, rubbed the blood from her eyes. Her forehead had split open again. “This is all your fault,” she said.
“Caitlin,” Arlon warned. “Not now.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I put the Lexicon in this position. I’m responsible for every death since that shield fell, every lost Lexicon soldier and student. Tell me, though, how would you defeat my enemies?” I felt that old familiar arrogance, the hot, jealous poison inside of me that Tal, sweet Tal, had once mistaken for confidence. “None of you would stand a chance. This world would be for the Void long ago, if I hadn’t acted.”
“OK,” Annie said, stretching the word out into a low whistle. “Let’s not argue. We’re all still friends here.”
“Allies,” Arlon said. “We’re allies.”
The mountainside rose ever higher, the Atlas Lexicon far below us now—save for the Vale Crystalis, we hadn’t quite summited past the height of that tower yet—but was quickly becoming less of a scramble and more of an actual climb. If we had to go much higher, if Ash had fled beyond us, we were doomed. The world would crumple and die.
But she wouldn’t have fled much farther, not while she still needed me, needed the sword. Sheer spite and rage would ensure we had our last battle—I wanted to see what she had to say about burning the grove of celestial illusion, perhaps the greatest treasure in all creation. Entire worlds and universes prayed to that alloy, saw it as divine. Which made what I’d done an act of incomparable blasphemy. When word spread, as word always did, I’d have more than a few new bounties on my head.
And what do we say to that? Well, heck, sure sounds like Future Declan’s problem.
I clung to the hilt of the rune sword, created only last week and ten thousand years ago in the starlit forges of the Vale Celestia, willing it to keep me going. The pain was returning now, my legs and arms trembled from the exertion. Soon, very soon, I’d pass out. And there was still a god to fight. Climbing this mountain felt rather biblical, though, so if nothing else at least our thematic narrative was in order.