She let the magic flow into herself and the darkness quailed. With the blade, she could channel limitless power. She could remake the world, wipe it clean.
The touch of Haumea’s staff in her hand brought her back to her senses, and the pain wiped her mind clean. She stood and pulled the blade from the frozen plateau. Moonlight glistened from the fracture that spiralled out from the damage she had caused. And the pain inside her cried out in sympathy with the world.
Aviti heard Tilden’s laughter, mocking her failure. Once more, she thought of crushing him, but her focus splintered when another wraith stepped from the encircling blackness. She knew who it was before she could make out her face. ‘Mother,’ she said in a voice that no-one could hear but herself. Her mother looked just as she had in her vision. Tall and proud, she stood, black cape billowing around her shoulders.
She glided towards Aviti, her hands held open and palms upward. Aviti felt the urge to go and embrace her mother, but she knew it was a lie. Her mother was dead and had been for years. She had spoken to her, or her spirit, in the passage to this place.
‘You have done your part my girl,’ her mother said as she closed the distance between them. ‘Come with me darling.’
‘Come with you where?’ Aviti asked before she could stop herself.
‘Shhh. Do not worry. Come with me. I will take your pain away forever.’
‘No mother,’ Aviti said, but her voice lacked any conviction.
‘Aviti don’t,’ said a distant voice.
‘Let the whore go. She is no longer of any use to you.’
‘Aviti open your eyes,’ the other insistent voice called, so she did.
She stood at the edge of the abyss. Darkness around her and darkness before her. The unknown blackness of the Dhuma just one step away called to her, peaceful and tranquil. The darkness that surrounded them boiled and churned. It screamed in her mind of her past failures.
Just one step and it would all go away. Even the delicate pull of Tyla on her consciousness was not enough to stop her. She blocked out everyone and lifted one foot. If she took this step it would end it all.
But it would condemn everyone to endless torment: all those points of light that had pleaded with her for help. And her father. Her father lived within her bond with Tyla. He would never be free. She put her foot back down beside Haumea’s staff.
The Waren screamed and howled in frustration. Their teeth gnawed at her exposed flesh, but it was no worse than the cold. She had endured the cold. She could endure this.
Then the pressure built behind her as the Waren sought to throw her into the pit. But she knew the truth. She leaned on her staff – on Haumea’s staff – and resisted. If she did not want to move, the darkness could not make her. Neither could her own rage be the end of her, if she did not let it.
‘Your captors have failed Tilden,’ said Wist.
‘What captors, you fool. The Waren obey me. I have bent the darkness to my will,’ said Tilden, hiss clipped tones sounding hollow in this vast space.
‘Nobody controls them,’ said Wist as the wind howled around him. ‘You have let them control you.’
‘No!’ screamed Tilden. The hair on Aviti’s arms stood on end as the broken man sent out a wave of dark fire, but it never reached her. Wist opened his arms wide and accepted the punishment into himself. It tore strips from the rags that adorned his body and flayed the skin beneath, but he did not flinch.
Tilden cursed and screamed again, throwing more and more ethereal energy at Wist. The ground trembled, forcing Aviti to take a few steps away from the edge.
Then she saw the Waren fly to Tilden’s aid. Black lightning and clouds of ebony hate assaulted Wist. Wave after wave of assault battered the man. Aviti wanted to run to him, but this was not her fight. The darkness could not touch her, but neither could she harm it. So, she clung to her staff and tried to endure the storm.
Sevika stood in the midst of it all. Ignored by the Waren and unmoved by the magical assault, she observed all that happened, just as her kind had done since this world was born.
The moon dimmed as the assault went on. Aviti had to peer through the eternal night to see the combatants. Then she staggered as one of the Damned careered into her. The dead man fell onto the smooth surface and the growing wind blew him into the Dhuma, or the hole where the Dhuma had been.
Then the crack in the surface of this plane widened. Aviti dropped and rolled away from it as it issued a deafening roar. The crack shot across the plane towards Wist and Tilden, but it veered to one side and left Sevika separated from the warring brothers.
Wist absorbed everything that his brother threw at him, and all the malice that the Waren could muster. Aviti turned her head from the gruesome spectacle, but as she looked to the sky, she could not find the moon.
She cried out in despair. If the moon was gone then all was lost. Wist would fail and then darkness would finally claim the land. She should have thrown herself in when she had the chance. At least that way she would not have to witness the death of the land that she loved. As she railed at the night, a tiny spot of light caught her eye.
It was a star; a perfect glimmering point in the sky and before she could gasp another came out to join it. Then another and another appeared and moments later, the sky was flooded with stars.
Her tears of despair changed to tears of joy. The Ghria Duh was still in the sky, but its intensity had faded. Then she noticed how quiet it had become. All that she could hear now was the failing wind and the scraping march of the Damned.
She slumped to the ground and found that Sevika had joined her. The Intoli extended a hand to help Aviti up, and the girl from Mashesh grabbed the leathery digits.
‘It is almost done,’ said the Intoli.
Aviti looked where the Intoli gestured. At first, she could only make out one figure in the gloom, but then she saw two figures embracing.
‘No,’ cried Tilden quietly. ‘No.’ The man’s broken face twisted in agony.
‘It is over,’ said Wist.
Aviti shivered as a fresh gust of wind scraped over her bared skin. She watched as the two men separated and took a few steps forward.
‘You never controlled the Waren Tilden, and neither did I,’ said Wist as they walked. Aviti went to approach them, but Sevika held her arm tight.
‘No,’ she said, ‘this must be allowed to pass.’
‘What?’ she said.
As Wist walked, his shadow rippled behind him, as if he was comprised of night-time. ‘He has absorbed all of the Waren into himself,’ thought Aviti, her eyes glistening.
Wist’s skin was shredded, as if he had been flayed by a sandstorm, but his eyes were brighter than she had ever seen them. It was as if his soul shone out from their depths, and it was beautiful. His face was a complex mask of hate, grief and love. As he and Tilden paused at the side of the Dhuma, Wist turned to look at Aviti.
‘Close your eyes. Then do what you need to do,’ said Wist.
‘Do not do this,’ she pleaded. Then something came back to her. ‘My father,’ she said in desperation. ‘He said he was wrong in what he told you.’
A smile broke on Wist’s abused face. ‘I know. There never were any twins.’ He turned to look in to Tilden’s green eyes and said, ‘You never had a brother.’
Then Wist stepped off the edge, drawing Tilden with him. Aviti screamed and reached for the magic, but something blocked her path.
As the two men fell, Aviti watched them blend into one another, making a single figure. A single figure that looked just like Enceladus, completing Aviti’s holy trinity. Then then world erupted in flames.
Part 4 - Acceptance
24 - The Death We Owe
Pain shot from Aviti’s eyes to the core of her skull. Light as pure and unforgiving as the sun itself burst from all around her. Only the hand grabbing her arm kept her upright. She rammed her eyelids together and then thrust her hands into her eyes, but she was too late. Sevika pulled her close, but t
he pain was too much. Aviti lost herself for a while until the pain subsided and the light passed. Then she opened her eyes, but all was dark. She could hear scuffling all around her. She could smell decay and rot, but she could see nothing. The Intoli whispered something, but she did not - could not - hear it.
The Ghria Duh was gone and with it so was Wist. He had thrown himself away. After all their efforts to get him here, he had thrown himself into the abyss anyway. But she knew that was not fair, for the sun now warmed her face. She could feel its gentle warmth defrost her bones. Wist had cleansed the world of the Ghria Duh, but Aviti’s world was still black.
‘Sevika,’ she cried. ‘My eyes.’ Everything span inside of her head. What did it matter if the world had been saved if she could not see it? Damn the world, she wanted to see. ‘No,’ she screamed until her throat was raw. Sevika said nothing. She just held Aviti tight.
In the depth of Aviti’s despair, at the heart of the vortex, was a pulsing beat. She tried to drive it away, force it out of her dark heart, but it was insistent. It pulsed nearly in time with her heart, but it was faster.
It was excited. It was full of… full of joy. It was Tyla.
He was alive and he was overjoyed, but of course he would be. The Sun had shaped his entire life. He had been tempered by its merciless heat in the most hostile of places in this world. Its loss had hit him harder than anyone else. So, despite herself, Aviti smiled, and as she did so, she felt Tyla’s gratitude flowing to her through their bond. She had not lost everything.
But the smell of rottenness would not be assuaged. With every breath, the stench grew in her nostrils.
‘What is that rank smell?’ she asked Sevika as she pushed herself away from the Intoli, but she knew what the answer was. It was not the Damned as Aviti had originally assumed, although they made up part of the odour. It seeped from the ground, from the land itself.
‘Sevika,’ she said, ‘the land. The land is wrong. The land around us, it is rotten. Oh, Father help me.’
She took a step backwards and Sevika grasped her wrist again.
‘Let me go,’ Aviti snapped, and the hand withdrew. She felt the weapon forming in her hand and she grasped the impotent device tightly. But she was just the same as this blade now. All of the power she had at her command and she was left staggering about on top of a mountain. She tried to reach out for the magic, but she had so little control over herself that it was impossible to hold.
Then she slipped on the smooth surface and her face collided with the earth. As she lay there trying to get her bearings, the odour grew stronger and stronger. Lifting herself up only made things worse and she had to kneel on all fours to vomit what little was in her system out upon the ground. The smell of her own sickness mingled with the wrong of the land and the noise of the Damned shuffling around her.
A hand pressed upon her shoulder and this time she did not try to resist it. She stood, with some help and leaned on Haumea’s staff. Then she took as many deep breaths as she could manage, trying not to bring on the vertiginous sickness once more.
‘Sevika. I am blind. I cannot see. Can you... can you see?’
‘Yes,’ said the Intoli. There was a warmth in the Intoli’s voice that Aviti had never heard before.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said as she was buffeted by another of the Damned.
‘The Source has returned to the world. When Wist and... the other fell, the Kalsurja vanished from the sky. The Source has returned Aviti.’
‘But something is still not right,’ said Aviti.
‘The Dhuma is gone also.’
‘Gone? How can that be? The hole in the mountain cannot just disappear?’
‘The hole is there, but the remains of the Dhuma is gone. It burned away the Angi-Prasada.’
Just as it burned my eyes, she thought.
The Angi-Prasada is gone... Haumea… Aviti rolled these thought around in her head, but she had to put them to one side for now.
‘But the Damned, they are still here.’
‘Yes Aviti. More of them arrive every moment.’
Why had they not gone when the Waren had - when the Ghria Duh had vanished? The overpowering reek from below clouded her thoughts. She had to get out of here.
As she opened her mouth to speak, Sevika said, ‘They come.’
‘Who Sevika? Who is coming?’ Could it be Haumea? But Sevika had said “they”. Aviti repeated her demands, but Sevika ignored her.
Then she heard the sound of tinkling bells. The sound grew in her consciousness until they became a million tiny voices joined in harmony. She had heard the sound before, and so had Sevika. The lights. The lights that had tried to guide them when they were lost in Pyrite. The lights that had warned Sevika against the action that had doomed her people.
The lights that had charged her with being the future.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It is done. Leave me be. Have you not extracted enough from me yet?’
You must free us child of light.
‘Must I?’ she spat into the bitter wind. ‘And if I throw myself into the pit, what then?’
Then you will join us, and we shall roam forever upon this world, our numbers forever swelling.
‘Join us?’ Aviti repeated and then the import of what she said hit her.
She could not die. She was trapped in this world forever and so was everyone. They were trapped here until the end of time, unless she found a way to meet the lights’ impossible demand.
‘I am too weak,’ Aviti began to say until she heard the discord growing in the lights’ harmony. They did not care for her strength or weakness. They only knew their need and Aviti only knew the pain in her head.
‘I cannot do this,’ she added, but they did not reply.
All the time she spoke and issued her denials, her senses grew more attuned to the world around her. So, she stopped speaking and retreated inside herself for a while, but she could not cut off the world.
She calmed her mind as much as she could and sought for the place within herself where the magic lay sleeping. At first, she panicked, thinking the sun had burned it from her, but after a second, she found it. Then she pulled some of it into herself, and then using Haumea’s staff as a conduit, she sent her senses outwards. The sensations that came to her were a jumbled mess. Shapes and sounds appeared intertwined in her mind. Tastes and smells assaulted her with bitter poison, but she deflected them away.
It was light she sought, but it did not come to her, not in the way she wanted at least. Through the staff, she could sense the mountain beneath her. The smooth plateau resonated in her mind and the circular hole at its centre sent ripples to her as her magic caressed its edges. As she explored the platform, her attention was drawn towards a point a few yards from where she stood. The spot sat like a canker in her magical sight.
Aviti took a step towards it and she felt Sevika move with her. The Intoli radiated power in Aviti’s inner vision, but rather than distracting her, Sevika helped to provide fragile illumination for Aviti’s new sight. Black masses moved around them as they walked; indistinct images of incomplete people. She tried to force them from her mind lest her tenuous grip on the magic slipped away from her.
After a few faltering steps, they were beside the hole that Aviti had torn in the surface of the world. Wrongness poured from the split. It stung all of her senses, magical and otherwise.
‘Sevika, what have I done?’ she quailed.
‘This was not your doing,’ said Sevika, sensing the reason for Aviti’s distress. This darkness - this wrong - has tormented the Intoli for an age. You did not create this. It has grown in the heart of the world and Wist released it. You have merely added a rift where a larger one already existed.’
Aviti thought about denying it, but Sevika was correct. The fracture line that she had created spiralled away and joined another, deeper fault; the one that Wist had created on his initial exit from this world.
Clouds of dark energy billowed from the crack. Whe
n Aviti moved her head, she saw clouds in the sky like poison gas, in her mind. Within it, she caught tiny flickers of starlight.
Aviti reached out to touch one, but it vanished. Then it returned, but instead of a static point, it shot skyward. As she moved her hand back and forth, more and more of these lines of invisible light revealed themselves to her.
‘What is that?’ she asked, but Sevika either did not know or could not see it.
‘Do you now comprehend our gaol?’ said a multitude of voices inside of her head.
She looked further up and saw the points of light dancing above her. They looked like stars in her mind, but the heat of the sun remained on her face. The lines running from the ground glittered back and forth, moving in concert with the lights in the sky. Their prison. They have been tethered to the world.
‘Yes,’ she said to the motes of light. ‘Yes, damn you, I understand.’
She understood it all too well. She had been tethered just like they were. Her Intoli friend had once been her captor and her shoulder still ached where she had been violated to achieve the Intoli’s goal.
But worse was to come for the girl from Mashesh. When she turned her head, she could see a tiny thread of light shooting from her chest, away into the distance. And trapped within it was a star. She cried out when she saw it and withdrew back into her own dark prison.
Do not quail daughter of the future.
‘Stop it!’ she yelled. ‘Stop it.’
Free us.
‘Damn you,’ she muttered. ‘And damn me too.’ She knew she had to face this, but not now. Again, the wind scored her skin, as she tried to think things over. Damn them all. Why did she have to be the one?
The golden metal flowed around her wrist and into her hand as her anger soared. Was that all that this thing was useful for? Cutting and piercing?
‘Cutting,’ she said aloud. That was it.
She turned her face to where she thought the lights were.
‘Gather all of your brethren. Gather them here quickly.’
As she breathed in and out whilst awaiting a reply, Sevika said, ‘It will not work’
The Redemption of Wist Boxed Set: Books 1 - 3: The complete collection Page 89