“Welcome home,” Aurea purred. She pulled Maven forward, guiding her into her arms. As she held the Queen closely, her eyes caught sight of the second wagon which was but a poor shadow to its younger sibling.
It was small and old. The wagon's spoils were feeble. Thick furs were draped across two rickety chests. However the locks upon the troves were very new and alluded to Aurea's observant eyes that they carried more than they seemed.
The Empress narrowed her eyes. Her flames rose within her pupils. She slowly seared the surface of the chests with her eyes.
Maven withdrew from Aurea's embrace. She peered up into the face lovingly looking down at her.
“Please,” Aurea purred, “go and greet your Queen.”
Maven's glorious smile was revealed to the world even as the majority of her face remained hidden. She hurried toward Salem then bowed graciously. “My Lady,” she voiced solemnly.
Salem's eyes welled with tears. Her hands extended to cup the face she longed to see. “Virtue be praised,” she spoke softly. “Our Champion is home.”
Cries rang out throughout the castle grounds.
Salem could only smile. She seductively took Maven's hand in hers. She gave a sensuous come-hither gaze which was not missed by those in attendance. Together, they moved into the castle.
The doors had only just closed behind them to the royal bedchamber before Salem pushed the helmet from her Mistress' head and embraced her tightly.
Maven smiled while holding Salem closely. She took a certain sense of comfort in the familiar softness of the woman's body.
“I'm so happy that you're home,” Salem whispered. “I'm so happy that you're safe! I was so worried, Mistress.”
Maven's hand rose tenderly to cradle the back of Maven's head. Gently she shushed the tearful beauty. “Shh, everything is all right. I am home. I am safe.”
“But what happened, my Lady?” Salem asked breathlessly. “What did you find?”
“Yes,” a voice suddenly said. Aurea stood with the doors behind her. She closed them at her back with a distinctive click. “What have you found?” she asked with a deadly quiet. She slithered seductively forward, her burning eyes never leaving Maven's gaze. “What wonders have you brought me?”
The Queen smiled with as much intensity as she saw simmering inside the Empress. “I have brought you the wisdom of the ancients.”
The dreamy air in Maven's words caused Aurea to look upon the blond with curious appreciation.
“Their magic is now our own,” Maven purred with a knowing air. All the while, the symbol dwelling unseen at her side throbbed with a heartbeat all its own, reminding her that Logos was with her.
********
Fireflies danced on a dreamy evening. All across the land, the people of Pyros celebrated. None celebrated more than the people of Whispering Winds. The expedition had returned and with it so too had the life of their province.
On this night of rejoicing, the castle gates had been opened to the people. Members of every house had donned their finest garments to attend Queen Maven's ball.
It was lost amidst that sea of splendor that Maven slipped away unseen. She sought out the solitary comfort of her library only to find that it was not as empty as she might have wished.
A man sat within a leather chair. His noble head was lowered while he read quietly.
Maven tilted her head as she regarded Donovan closely. “My Lord,” she greeted gently.
Donovan lifted his head. His face became extremely apologetic as he recognized Queen Maven. He closed the book in his hand, immediately beginning his apologies.
Maven raised her hand, calling for him to return to his seat. “I came to get away from the chaos just as you did.” She smiled. “Please...” She motioned graciously with her hand. “Continue reading.”
The Queen drew close to the rows of shelves lining the walls. Her fingertip ran along the spines of many books while perusing their titles. Her fingers gently clasped a book of prose. She took it with her to soothing window-seat.
As she read, Maven could feel the watchful eyes of the King upon her. She knew that he was peering out at her from behind his book.
“You are destined for Logos,” she said, at last breaking the silence.
Donovan nodded. He closed his book again, putting an end to the pretense of reading. “Yes,” he sighed.
“Do you know why you were chosen to lead this mission?” Maven asked. Nonchalantly, her fingers turned a page.
Donovan narrowed his eyes as he thought to his suspicions.
“Angelos is threatened by you. He whispers in Aurea's ear.”
Donovan's fist balled at this confirmation. “I knew it!” he hissed beneath his breath. “He's trying to set me up.”
“Yes,” Maven answered calmly. Her coolness startled the King. “Still,” she continued with an air of ease, “Aurea wants Logos and is determined to have it despite Angelos' desires to see you fail.”
Donovan could feel his feelings for Angelos worsening by the moment.
“If you fail, Aurea will simply continue to send wave after wave of soldiers until she has the Holy Land.”
“Then what do I do,” he asked, “if my death means so little?”
“You ensure that you live.”
“But I've heard the stories told by your men, read your accounts,” he argued. “You only just survived the expedition. How am I to lead an army five times yours into this land and hope to be successful?”
“You have the knowledge of our experiences to help guide you.” Maven sighed in boredom. “That will ensure you survive.”
Donovan rose from his chair. He could feel his heart thundering inside his chest. He moved to stand closer to the windows and to the beautiful blond affectionately taking in each line of text. He dropped his voice conspiratorially despite his great desire to raise it in panicked frustration. “Lady Maven, you and I both know that if Angelos is to be proven wrong, I cannot merely survive the land. I must rule it in Aurea's name. Otherwise, he will rise as her trusted counsel. He will be a threat...” His voice lowered all the more as he stooped his head to find Maven's gaze. “To all of us.”
Maven stopped. She lifted her piercing green eyes from the poignant words painted across each page. Closing the book with an echoing thud, she witnessed the true magnitude of Donovan's fear. “What do you suggest we do?”
“Is there nothing in your studies of the old ways which could help me?”
Maven shifted her eyes in the direction of the night sky. Her brows furrowed in thought. “There might be something,” she began pensively.
Donovan impulsively took a seat near her. “What is it?” he asked.
“A question first,” Maven whispered. “What do you fear most? Logos or Aurea's wrath?”
A queasy sickness began to torment the King's stomach. “I honestly cannot say.” His voice dropped from its usual commanding thunder. “Both frighten me more than I can say.” An odd sort of shame accompanied his body language at this admission. “I cannot fail,” he added with quiet earnest. “In two days.... the invasion will ensure my life or my death.”
Maven reached out and lightly touched his cheek. She compelled his eyes to find hers once more. She stared into him for a time-stilling moment. Her eyes sought out the truest feelings in his being. She shifted her eyes past him to the doors remained slightly apart. “Close the door,” she breathed.
********
In the fields of golden reeds an unprecedented division stood awaiting their signal to move. They were as glittering stars fighting to remain brilliant within a dying night. Golden armor voiced their virtue or so it had been said by the glorious vision standing before them.
Aurea wore radiant white. Her silken toga conformed to her sensuous form in an effort to tantalize the eyes as well as the soul. She grew more beautiful with every passing day. It was rivaled only by her surmounting power.
Full blond curls had been pulled up from her graceful neck. Each tress was me
ticulously held in place by golden thread and glinting diamonds.
She lifted her left hand, causing her bare shoulder to dance. “Fear nothing, my blessed army of Light,” she soothed. “Today you succeed where only legends reign.”
Aurea scoured over the sea of proud faces. These strong men and women were poised on the abyss of destiny, prepared to claim it with all the zeal in their hearts. Her eyes stopped as she caught sight of their leader.
Donovan stood holding the reigns to his white owl. His golden armor was more ornate than anything Aurea had ever seen. She knew that the symbols lining it had been placed there as a means of protection. Through the lion mask of his helmet, she could see his intense blue eyes. She studied them closely, unable to read their innermost emotions.
The Empress drew close to him. As she approached, the soldiers dropped to one knee in a slow-moving golden wave. She cupped the face of her chosen general. Tenderly, she bestowed a favoring kiss to a lion's savage brow. “You will be victorious,” she predicted.
A silent young boy stepped forward. In his hands, he carried a golden bowl. He struggled not to spill a drop of the blood filling it to the brim.
Aurea dipped two fingertips inside the red nectars. She smeared an arc across the forehead of his mask, completing the act of protection. Her eyes met Donovan's deeply. “The Book of Wrath says no harm can come to you now.” She watched as he could only nod.
As Donovan moved away, another soldier took his place. The Empress lifted her eyes momentarily to the field. Her priests of Virtue were tending to the masses, anointing them for their journey to Logos. When the last of her army had felt the fiery kiss of phoenix's blood, she knew it was time. Her head turned to gaze in the direction of the approaching dawn and with it, the slow-creeping fog.
Maven moved forward. Her heart thundered violently inside her chest. She looked away just long enough to hold Donovan's eyes.
He stared at her with a memory racing throughout his mind. Close the door, he heard Maven purr and as a man having heard a siren's song, he obeyed. He would not forget. His eyes voiced as much.
“Logos,” the young pages called earnestly. They ran along the column lines warning all of the land's impending closeness.
The trumpeters sounded the call to action.
As the Empress pointed her finger to the sky, her army of anointed followers took flight. She kept her eyes on her coveted prize as the sky became thick with golden soldiers.
The light of morning was obscured by the huge owls taking soldiers and supplies to the floating isle.
The Empress smiled triumphantly. It would not be long before her army reigned Logos and her towers barricaded the island. Aurea felt her chest swell with the moment.
“Logos will be mine,” she whispered.
********
A mighty howl filled the air. It was the island's lament. Logos was screaming beneath the massive wooden planks being driven into the earth.
The military carpenters slammed together walls with demonic speed. They had to work in a frenzied pace to erect the towers at all four points of the isle. Around each tower a fort was built to shelter the armies of Virtue which would inhabit Logos, thereby enforcing that Logos was now under Pyrosian rule.
Each nail driven into the skeletal structure of the man-made abomination was answered by the passionate blows of the mystical creatures of Logos attacking the Pyrosian forces. It was a struggle for their lives on both sides. The creatures of Logos were fighting for life as they had known it all these millennia while Donovan's men were battling to save themselves from death, either at the hands of these mythical beings or at Aurea's order upon their failure.
When the last of the forts had been constructed, they each stood as the dawn of a new era, Empress Aurea's era. It was the downfall of what had once remained untouched and pristine.
The sky swirled with dark violet clouds. It crackled with angry lightning. Then as if to break the very sky, a flag of piercing white was hoisted upward brutally. The flag whipped bitterly in the harsh winds. In the flag's heart, a glittering gold star encompassed by radiating rays of light said what words could not.
Aurea, Empress of Pyros, had conquered the Land of Logos.
Chapter Twelve
When stars sleep, their light is lost to the night sky. We mourn the loss of their beauty. We plead for their return, but all that is, is black.
-----Book of Wrath
********
Time ravaged the earth with an angry hand. It spared no one from its clawed arrival. None felt its stinging caress more than the druids of Pyros. With each tear shed by the druids, another tear was empathetically released by their leader, Soren.
Shadows reigned over his existence where once there had been divine light. He traversed the underground world which had taken him nearly one year to find. As he gazed around its crumbling strength, he instantly felt a kinship with this subterranean world. Once it had been beautiful. Once it had been a haven to great knowledge and life, but all that remained now were the echoes of something long forgotten.
Soren hugged his body tightly. He walked with a downcast head. In the absolute darkness of this world, his blindness mattered very little. What images he could see were the ghostly auras of spirits not yet realizing their time had passed. As he watched them flutter by, he wondered if perhaps he was like them. He agonized over the possibility. After all, had the time of the druids not ended?
With a tiny whimper, he pushed that thought away. If their time had come to a close then so be it, but it should be because the druids themselves had chosen their Fate. The decision of their end should not belong to a tyrannical ruler set upon genocide.
His hand snaked upward to clutch his pounding head. He could hear them. He could hear them all so loudly. Their voices stalked him without end. He was the trembling prey and they---- they were the hunters set upon ravenous consumption.
Ones thoughts can be a dangerous enemy. And yet, if the thoughts had been his alone, he might have stood a chance of keeping some semblance of sanity. Unfortunately for his pounding head, these were the thoughts of the many. The druids were all tied to him and their every fear floated in the air like a mist. They fell upon him, saturating all he was and knew.
He walked almost aimlessly until he found himself lost among an ancient temple. A towering statue of stone loomed over him. In the blackness, it glowed with twinkling moss accentuating the features of a noble dragon.
Beneath its face of eerie emerald and shadowy ebony, Soren knelt. He extended his lithe hand. His index finger slowly began to scribe mystical archaic symbols within the earthen floor. As he wrote from right to left, his eyes were vacuous orbs of red.
Each word to grace the soot was met with the rise of softly spoken whispers. Their hushed origins were everywhere and nowhere.
Nothing existed visibly within the temple, but Soren, himself. And yet, something had come to noticeably weight the air with its looming presence.
On the horizon, a vertical line was birthed of darkness. It was a line of shimmering light. As the text grew further and further down the earth's black-bellied scroll, the dancing line of gold began to swell.
A reverent tear trickled down his porcelain cheek. He was in the presence of the thread of time. It seemed so strong at first. Yet as he wrote the final word, the word pertaining to the ones he sought, the ethereal light of the thread waned. It transformed from a brilliant gold to a pained red. Then it began to writhe like a small flame beneath a cold wind.
The word to doom the thread of time to weakness had been a simple one. Druid.
Kneeling with his finger still poised within the dirt, Soren struggled with what to do next. It was then that he decided upon a desperate act, an act of finality. Everything in him pleaded against his actions. He thought that it felt all too much like admitting their defeat, but if he did not, if he held out in his stubbornness, all could be lost.
He wrote another incantation with a trembling hand.
A parc
hment materialized from the remnants of twinkling dust. As it drew together to form a tangible surface the quivering thread of time intermingled with it. It interwove so precisely as if Soren had taken to spinning the thread with nimble fingers.
“And so our stories lives on,” he murmured, “interwoven in the fabric of eternity even if we are lost.”
_________________
When the collective wish of a people is not for future accomplishments, but simply to be remembered by the future at all, it is clear that all hope is lost. I know this to be true because it is this very motivation which stirs us to write.
_________________
“Do you know the story of how Druids came to be?”
It was a question asked to me when I was very young. I could only turn my head in the direction of my mother's voice while lost in wonder. I was far too young to realize that my life would be one of trials, one of spirituality and inevitably one of immortality.
As my mother sat near the fire, she took me tenderly into her arms. I felt her warmth as she scooped my little body effortlessly from the ground. She guided me to rest against her as I sat contentedly upon her lap.
I remember the scent of her hair. It always smelt of flowers. Her skin was always warm and soft, smelling of sweet milk and honey.
Being born blind, I had never known the vision of my mother's face, but those things... her touch, her scent, the sound of her familiar shuffling, they allowed me to see her in ways others could not.
I listened to her heart beating evenly as we sat bathed in the fire's warmth.
“You are so much like your grandmother,” she said. “She was born without sight, but one day she gained a new sight. You will as well, my joy.... my Soren.”
Swaddling me closer, she then told me the story which I share with you now. It was the story which would forever change my young life.
Long ago, she said, when the world was still new, two brothers walked amidst the trees.
The first brother was strong and brave. He was so near to leaving behind all childish things to become a young man. He was Sage.
The second brother was young and hopeful. His eyes were alight with adoration as he followed behind his brother. He was Omen.
The Flame of Wrath Page 23