“Maltua always said the titans of old were pure chaos,” Ryin argued. “He said he vanquished them and their angels of chaos, and by so doing, brought order to the world.”
Alabshire marveled. “How could no one have known about this? I was always taught that changelings were demons from the underworld.”
Pops passed by the doorway, mopping the corridor. “Maybe they lied to you.”
“You knew the history your gods wanted you to know,” Mandi explained. “It’s just another layer of control. They designed you to serve them and worship them out of fear.”
Privet and Talliun looked at each other. “Could it be?”
Mandi’s face softened. “When our Father god died...that was the first time sorrow entered this world. The new gods divided the world into territories; they created their own plants, their own animals, and their own people to be their soldiers. They imbued them with powerful and destructive magics, and used them to hunt my kind to extinction.”
She looked at her hand, her eyes pained. “My people had never known war; they didn’t know how to defend themselves. They were so innocent, they couldn’t even comprehend what was happening. By the time they became bitter enough to fight back, there were too few left to make a difference. Now, there are only three. My Father Dev’in, my brother Blair, and myself.
“We three have served Valpurgeiss ever since, helping him plot his revenge against the gods who betrayed him and shattered his form. We created the Stone Council and the League as a way of maintaining control while we slowly gathered the materials we needed to restore Valpurgeiss’ power.”
Margaret raised her hand.
Mandi rolled her eyes. “I’m not your teacher, Margaret, just ask.”
Margaret adjusted her cracked glasses. “But what you say doesn’t make sense. If Valpurgeiss was so good…why has he ordered his servants to do such terrible things? Getting people addicted to ruper spice, kidnapping thousands, killing millions. It’s all so…evil.”
Mandi flinched. “What we did is evil…unforgivably evil, and he told us to do it.”
“But why?”
“If you take away all the light from someone, all that is left is darkness. He became twisted and evil. In the void, he developed a new form of magic, powered not by light, but by shadow.”
Captain Evere slapped his hands on his knees. “I have heard enough of this swillwater.”
“Husband?”
Evere stood up. “Lest we forget, this creature is our enemy. She tells us a tale of how her god is good and ours are bad, and we’re just supposed to believe her?”
Mandi looked hurt. “I’m not lying.”
Evere put his hand on his pommel. “Well, there’s no way for us to be knowing that, is there?”
Molly stood up. “She’s not lying.”
“Of course she is! She’s an agent of the Stone Council. That’s what she does, that’s ALL she does.”
Molly stamped her foot.
“No, not anymore! I taught her not to. She’s a good kitty now.”
“Oh, please!”
Mina grabbed Evere’s sleeve. “Allis…Captain, you’re arguing with a child.”
“And losing,” Ryin snickered.
Mandi took Molly and gave her a hug to calm her down. “He’s right, kid. There’s nothing I can do to prove to them that what I say is true. All I can do is offer my help and hope they take it.”
“Help?” Evere roared.
He stepped closer, towering over her like a mountain. “You witch, your void magic nearly destroyed my marriage. You made me tell my wife that I hate Mesdans. You made her cry, and I ain’t too inclined to forgive trespasses like that.”
“Please understand. My spell doesn’t implant feelings, it only brings to the surface feelings that were already there.”
“I know they were there!” Evere screamed, drawing his cutlass. “I do hate Mesdans, and I always will! But…”
His rage began to wane. “But…”
His blade rattled in his grip, the tip touching the deck. “…but I love my wife more.”
Mina bit her lip, her eyes swimming.
“I...I do I…I love her more. And, if we could have little Mesdan children together, by thunder, I’d love them just as much as I love her.”
Mina stood up and wrapped her arms and tail around her husband. She had never felt more in love with him than she did at that moment, and the sparkle in her lavender eyes told him she meant it.
“And that’s why we’re still together, Captain.”
Evere turned around and hugged her back. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. I’m sorry I’d like you better if you had a tail, but I’ll take you as you are.”
“I could make a potion to grow him a tail,” Dr. Griffin offered.
Mina looked up. “Really?”
“I’m not drinking any ooze that man gives me.”
Mina put her head back down. “Right, sorry.”
Dr. Griffin pouted, tugging on his grey ponytail. “Awww, I wanted to see him drink ooze.”
“Well, she made a lot of us admit things we didn’t want known.” Ryin said, standing up. “She made Privet here admit he was too much of a coward to marry Athel.”
“Hey!” Privet slugged him in the shoulder. “Don’t forget, she made you admit you’re a virgin, Colenat.”
“Did she really?” Rachael asked, her eyes sparkling mirthfully.
Ryin cleared his throat and rubbed his shoulder. “But the fact remains we can’t believe a word she says.”
Talliun nodded in agreement, folding her arms. “Why should we take her word over the word of our gods?”
“I believe her,” came a hoarse voice.
Everyone turned to the dark corner where Athel sat chained.
“You do, lass?”
Athel nodded. “Think about it. If our gods were the benevolent protectors they claim they are, would they have backed the Stone Council when it attacked Wysteria? Would they have stood by and done nothing as the seas worsened? Would they have actually opposed us when we attempted to end the rubric and save their own lands and people by assaulting the Monolith?”
No one could deny the reason in her words.
Athel sat up. “I’m not saying I believe her, I’m just saying that I’ve been told two stories, one by her and another by the gods, and hers fits the facts. Our whole world, our whole history, it’s just one big shiyya seed.”
Rachael blinked. “A what?”
Athel shook her head. “It’s one of the first lessons we get as Treesingers. A’chenti’i. Accepting that which you can change, and accepting that which you cannot.”
Everyone looked at her uncertainly.
Athel exhaled in exhaustion. “Look, you can choose to plant a seed or you can choose not to plant it. You can choose where to plant it, you can choose how much or how little to nourish it. You can protect it, or you can destroy it. Those are things you can control. But, you cannot control what kind of seed it is. You cannot make a shiyya seed grow into a nice lush berra bush. That’s just not how it works. If it’s a shiyya seed, it will always grow into a nasty, prickly shiyya vine.”
Evere and his wife sat back down. “I’m not sure I follow, lass.”
“I’m saying, if the seed of this world was a dark act of betrayal, motivated by greed, then what hope can we have of it ever becoming a good place? If we, the peoples of Aetria, were all created by the gods simply to be tools of war and destruction, to hunt down her people and act as pawns to satisfy the god’s pride as they fight with one another in pointless war after pointless war, how can there ever really be peace? If the seed is rotten, the tree will always be so.”
A dark pall of despair fell over the room.
Margaret looked down, devastated. “That’s such a horrible way to look at it.”
Athel lay back down. “No, that’s the honest way to look at it. I was a fool for thinking otherwise. It’s time to accept it.”
“Well, I don’t accept it,” Margaret said, with surprising force for her. “I refuse to believe that I was just made to be a weapon.”
Mandi sighed. “I know you don’t want to hear this from me, but it really doesn’t matter what you or I or any of us want to believe. It doesn’t matter which story makes us feel better. It only matters what the facts are.”
“There are things more important than facts.”
“Like what?”
“Like truth.”
“Facts are truth.”
Margaret stamped her foot. “No, they’re not!”
Mandi looked at her oddly.
Margaret reined in her anger, embarrassed at her outburst. “I was supposed to just be an illiterate trophy to marry off to some other merchant family. What if I had just accepted that fate? I wouldn’t be where I am today. And Privet, he wasn’t supposed to be anything but a slave. Talliun was raised to be a mindless, dogmatic enforcer. Look how far they’ve come.”
“That’s putting it rather harshly,” Talliun defended.
“…Mina was meant to be a guild thief, and Evere was raised to be…well a thespian, and he became a pirate instead.”
“And a day-care provider,” Mina added.
“What? Really?”
“The metaphor kinda falls apart there, lass,” Evere admitted.
“Yeah, but the point is, they took control of their own lives and became more than they were meant to be.”
She turned to Athel where she sat in the shadows. “We can’t give up.”
Athel closed her eyes and tugged on her collar, revealing the deep painful stitches that ran over her heart. “I tried fighting against my fate. Look where it got me.”
Margaret turned to the others. “Up until now we’ve been stabbing blindly in the dark. Now we have someone who can tell us the whole story of what we are up against. She may not have any magic, but she knows all their secrets, all their plans. I say, we find out what she knows and use it against them.”
Mandi nodded approvingly. “You’re smarter than you look.”
“Thanks.”
Margaret sat down, looking pleased with herself.
Her eyes shot open. “Hey, wait!”
Molly giggled.
Ryin stretched. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Margaret has a good point. I mean, what other option do we have at the moment?”
“The least we can do is hear her out,” Privet concurred.
“Might as well,” Rachael added.
Everyone looked to Evere for a decision.
“All right,” Evere said, clucking his tongue. “Continue your tale, lass. Your true intentions will be made plain in time.”
“Thank you.”
“So what does the Stone Council Kabal need in order to restore this Valpurgeiss?”
Mandi shifted her weight. “The Night of Rebirth has three essential components. First, it requires the sacrifice of a master from each discipline of magic. The Kabal spent centuries cultivating and capturing candidates from each island.”
She pointed at Athel. “Lady Forsythia here was supposed to be our sacrifice for Wysterian magic. That’s why I was sent after all of you.”
“So, does that mean they still need one?”
“No, I found out that during the second invasion, my brother was able to nab one of your Treesingers off a ship as it docked.”
Talliun nodded. “Yes, Jasmine Blackhaw. Where is she now?”
“Imprisoned with the others. Encased in living stone. Preserved in a nightmarish moment of terror until she is called upon to die. The death of each of the masters at once has two effects. First, it will create a connection between the great circle and each of the gods as the spirit within returns to its origin. Second, and most importantly, it creates a condition where every aspect of magic exists in one place at one time.”
She turned to Mina. “The synthesis you created in the Alliance was just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. Every kind of magic is a piece of a greater whole. Each kind grants the wielder control over a tiny piece of existence. When they are all assembled at once, they give…”
Mina’s eyes went wide. “They have dominion over all reality.”
“Exactly. That is why your gods gave you each only a piece. They feared what would happen if any one people possessed too many different kinds of magic.”
Mandi paused for a moment to let that sink in.
“The second thing that is needed is massive numbers of living souls to power the spell. What you call black shakes. After the millions of people The Stone Council liquidated, they now have more than enough.”
Dr. Griffin chuckled.
“Something funny?”
He wiped his nose. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make light. It’s just that void magic seems so overwhelmingly powerful, it sounds strange to think that they would need more power somehow.”
“Void magic is not true magic. It is a perversion and reacquisition of what once was part of Valpurgeiss. Remember that all the other gods were sired by Valpurgeiss breaking off a tiny piece of himself and imbuing it with free will, just as all of your peoples were created by the gods using the light of creation to break off a small piece of themselves. All life and all magic is therefore either directly or indirectly a piece of Valpurgeiss himself. Void magic reclaims that energy and uses it for new purpose. That’s why the gods are powerless against it. Void magic takes their own living essence and twists it against them.”
“And thirdly, the cosmos must be in alignment. Every thousand years, all seventy-eight constellations go into retrograde, and both the sun and the moon eclipse at the same time. When that happens in six weeks, the prison into which Valpurgeiss was placed opens once more and the spell can be consummated.”
Privet winced. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what will happen?”
“The light of creation will be torn away from the gods, and returned to Valpurgeiss.”
Ryin looked around. “Wait, that’s it?”
“Yes.”
Ryin sat back on his haunches. “Soooo…what’s wrong with that?”
Everyone turned to look at Ryin.
“Hey, sorry for being morbid, but just think about it. If what she says is true, if Valpurgeiss was good anciently, then wouldn’t restoring him to his true form be a good thing?”
Mandi nodded. “Yes, it would. He would go from being a god of darkness to a god of light again.”
Ryin put out his hands. “So, maybe the solution is simply to do nothing.”
Evere scoffed.
“No, seriously,” Ryin pressed. “I mean, I can’t believe I am saying this, since we’ve fought against the Stone Council for years, but maybe we can just sit back and let it happen?”
“And how much do you wanna bet that’s been her goal all along?” Evere concluded. “She wants us to do nothing and let it happen. They must have sent her here to undermine us and slow us down.”
He opened his black eyes sharply. “She’s here to be a barnacle.”
“No, Ryin’s plan is stupid,” Mandi retorted.
“Hey.”
“Despite what you may think, I want you to act, Captain. The problem with his suggestion is the seas. The gods killed off the water tribe during the unification wars, thinking that it would make the Night of Rebirth impossible for us to achieve. But, Valpurgeiss found a way around it. The Rubric, the curse that currently drives the waters mad with hunger, so completely saturates them with minerals that they can be controlled by a Stonemaster.”
Mina’s ears shot up. “Meaning that a Stonemaster can then be used as a sacrifice in lieu of a water tribe person.”
“They wer
e called Water Casters, but yes. So, even without a master of waters to sacrifice, the rebirth can still occur. It won’t forge a connection to that god, but will still complete that portion of dominion needed--the control over waters. The problem is that the Rubric is spiraling out of control. By the time the Night of Rebirth arrives, nearly all dry land will be destroyed, and your peoples along with it.”
Ryin rubbed his head and leaned back. “This is so wrong. All of it. We’ve been fighting against the Stone Council all this time when restoring Valpurgeiss would have been a good thing. But, it’s a bad thing because it’s happening a few weeks later than we can afford to let it happen. This is so messed up! If the eclipse happened just a few weeks earlier, everything would align.”
Mandi shook her head. “No, you were right to oppose them. The Kabal may have had a good objective, but they were willing to sacrifice millions of people to achieve it. Behind the scenes, we manipulated people into countless conflicts, using the battles and attacks as cover to snatch away people to sacrifice. We created astonishing amounts of suffering.”
Margaret got quiet. “That’s why I was taken.”
Mandi put a hand on her shoulder apologetically.
“Having a righteous goal isn’t enough,” Mandi concluded. “Your methods have to be righteous as well.”
She looked over at Athel, her eyes becoming soft. “That is something I learned from you. It is a lesson that came too late for me, I’m afraid. We both fought against the Kabal, but while I was willing to kill and torture, you showed your enemies mercy. You displayed maximum restraint, doing only as much harm as was absolutely necessary, and succoring your defeated opponents immediately after they were conquered.”
Athel clutched her wounded heart. “There is nothing in me worth praising.”
Privet tried to scoot himself over to comfort her, but she held up her hand and bade him not to.
“Please leave me alone. I’ve had enough guns put to my head for one day.”
Privet couldn’t hide how much it hurt him to hear her say that.
“So, what do we do?” Odger asked.
Mandi sighed. “That’s the real question, isn’t it? If I had a real plan, I wouldn’t have come to you, I’d have done it myself. I know all their secret places, all their methods, but without my magic, I can no longer gain access to their network. I’m useless to everyone.”
Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains Page 8